Minor loose wet instability on Incline Peak

We toured the NW and SE fringes of Incline Peak today. We were looking for upper snowpack faceting on protected northerly aspects and surface wet snow on solar aspects. We found both.

Snowpit work on a N aspect in below treeline terrain around 9,450' revealed some developing facets around a denser snow layer in the upper snowpack that is the Feb 19 rain crust along the Sierra Crest but is not a crust in the Mount Rose area. There is currently very little slab over this weak layer and propagation along this facet layer is unlikely at this time. Similar to the faceting observed around the Feb 19 rain crust along the Sierra Crest, this layer warrants monitoring for any potential future significant loading events.

Cloud cover today was less than forecast, but snow surface melt at the upper elevations still developed slowly. Around 12:15 pm we moved onto the SE aspect of Incline Peak and found transitional wet snow (not corn) on solar aspects as expected. This surface wet snow over colder snow yet to undergo melt was not separated by a supportable melt-freeze crust. Ski cutting on steep 40-42 degree convex rolls we were able to trigger tiny loose wet sluffs that were slow moving and did not run very far downslope.