Observations from Hungalelti Ridge

Cloudy day above Silver Lake, with occasional snow showers and occasional sun. Temperatures never climbed enough for warming instabilities to be observed. Light north wind was not transporting snow, with low density snow available at the surface. Previously wind loaded test slopes did not show signs of instability, though we received a second hand and vague report of a snowmobile triggered avalanche above Devil's Hole Lake. Nobody was caught or injured. We received this info at the end of the day and did not have time to investigate. 

Pic 1: Ice on trees from the wet beginning of the most recent storm. This coincided with test pits, that showed a crust and very dense layer at the bottom of the most recent snow. Cloudy skies and flat light for most of the day.

Pic 2: Several test pits had a similar structure to this, with no instabilities observed. The red arrows point to recent crusts. My shovel is resting on the Feb crust, which did not have facets near it in any of the places I looked today.

Pic 3: Red arrow points to a settlement crack. Many of these were seen by mid-afternoon.

Pic 4: We hit test slopes hard today, including several with small cornices, and didn't see any signs of instability.