SW Gultch, Tablelands

A calm cold day in the SW Gultch area. The “Japan Tress”, and Pic A Tenerife slopes were extremely full, showing a healthy midseason snowpack. In the SW Gulch Valley we found very good coverage as well. The E facing slopes of the valley, were holding new snow, with surface densities from stiff wind slab, to soft snow. Lots of evidence of heavy loading, and cross loading, in upper Alpine features. There was also a lot of debris in runout zones, from this past weekend‘s natural avalanche cycle. Our test between 400-450m showed some slab instabilities in the upper snow pack, but we found overall good bonding at the new snow/old crust interface, at this elevation band. The hard crust was anywhere from 10-100+cm down, depending on where we were in the valley.