Buried Surface Hoar in Deer Park

Our AIARE1 class toured into the Deer Park area to look for any soft cold snow remaining on north aspects. We found variable surface conditions, including good cold snow, heavier moist snow, thin breakable melt-freeze crust on low angle north slopes that had received some sun effect, and wet melt-freeze snow on more directly sunny slopes. We observed very minimal wind effect up to our high point at 7600', and any surface texture that we did see appeared to be at least a couple days old. 

Most notably, we dug a pit at about 7100' on a northeast aspect, in a clearing protected from the wind by the surrounding trees (pin drop location). We easily identified a layer of 2mm graupel down 24cm and a layer of pronounced 10mm surface hoar down 38cm. We did a few tests and got two Sudden Collapse results on the buried surface hoar in compression tests (2x CTH SC down 38cm) and one propagating extended column test (1x ECTP 23 down 38cm). Unfortunately we did not have time to dig into the snowpack elsewhere on our tour. 

Skies were clear and sunny in the morning and then some high thin clouds increased through the afternoon. Temperatures were above freezing and winds were calm to light where we were in the forest.