Stubborn wind slabs on Lincoln Ridge

New snow amounts on Yuba Pass and Lincoln Ridge this morning were just over 1 foot in wind protected areas. Snowfall was very light when we arrived at 9:45 am but increased to 0.5 inches/hr (S1) as the morning progressed. Minor amounts of blowing snow were observed below treeline, becoming intense as we moved into near treeline terrain. In the vicinity of ridgetop cornice features we found 1 to 2 foot thick, 1F hard wind slabs on top of F hard storm snow. A few more inches down below the F hard storm snow was the melt-freeze crust from just before this most recent storm event.

Intentionally collapsing cornice sections we were able to trigger some wind slab failure, but it took a fairly large cornice load to trigger a small (D1) wind slab avalanche. We also dug a test pit in wind loaded terrain where our ECT scored ECTP-12 failing 1 foot down at the bottom of a 1F hard wind slab sitting on top of F hard storm snow. All failures occurred above the old/new snow interface.