Found some buried surface hoar
Quick reportjeffmoskowitz · Mar 8, 2025 · Vancouver Island
Quick report
- Weather
- cloudy
- Ride Type
- mellowSlopes
- Stayed Away
- convexSlopes
- Riding Quality
- good
- Snow Conditions
- heavy, powder
Around 30cm of new snow on top of warmer snow that had refrozen into a supportable surface even though the trail breaking felt deep and the boot pen was 50cm. We did locate intact 3/5 buried surface hoar under the new snow and used a test pit to collect information on a few different layers. Overall good quality riding conditions with the occasional submarine into the un-consolidated layers below as we stuck to mellow terrain and avoided terrain traps.
Snowpack
- Depth
- 150
- Obs Type
- point
- Site Aspect
- W
- Test Fracture
- unevenBreak
- Site Elevation
- 800
- Ski Penetration
- 35
- Test Initiation
- easy
- Foot Penetration
- 50
- Test Failure Depth
- 30
- Site Elevation Band
- tln
- Surface Conditions
- newSnow
- Test Failure Layer Crystal Types
- surfaceHoar
At 800m on a W-aspect total snow depth was 150cm. Preserved 3-8mm 3/5 buried surface hoar was found down 30cm with an easy shovel shear and an extended column test that did not produce full propagation at ECTN12. In this area, the new snow was soft over the buried surface hoar and could react differently with a more consolidated slab on top. Deeper in the snowpack we investigated two weak layers around melt-freeze crusts with a propagation saw test. Each test produced propagation however the cut lengths were at or nearly halfway with PST 40/100 End down 75cm above a crust and PST 50/100 End down 85cm below a crust. Both of these layers we tested were softer and had larger grain sizes than adjacent layers.