Signs of developing wet loose instability around Relay Peak.

I toured the E Ridge of Relay Peak this morning. There was about 2 inches of settled storm snow in the area. Air temperatures still felt cool when I arrived at Tahoe Meadow at 10 am with a moderate westerly breeze. By 10:30 am warming was well underway and I was shedding layers accordingly.

I observed pockets of wind load up to 8 inches deep on NE-E-SE aspect test slopes. I ski cut and traversed several of these wind slab test slopes. I was only able to trigger cracking on one of them. Here the wind slab was 1F+ hard and failed about 1 inch above buried melt-freeze crust on 4F- storm snow. All the other test slopes showed no cracking whatsoever.

I started to see rollerballs occurring naturally during the late morning hours as snow fell off of rocks and trees on the upper elevation E aspects of Slab Cliffs and the far south end of Relay Peak. While descending some S to SE aspect terrain at noon, surface wet snow became increasingly prominent in sun exposed areas, especially below about 9,600'.

Across open solar aspects where most places held only the 2 inches of recent storm snow, it appeared that this recent storm snow would assimilate with the several inch thick melt-freeze crust below it by tomorrow morning. Where the recent storm snow was wind drifted and deeper, it seemed that full assimilation would take a few additional days.