Aspen

Snowpack

"Lots of deeply faceted snow, especially in the Boulder fields, we would just sink through almost 20" deep. Once we gained the ridge, it was clear the wind had loaded the leeward side (northeast) quite a bit. We chose to dig the following pit in an area that was representative of the entrance to the chute off of the summit of NY peak, as our biggest concern was wind slab from last weeks storm. We measured depth in our pit and the. Also about 50' down slope of our pit to gauge how deep the less wind affected areas were. We were measuring close to 320cm of snow depth, so likely still wind loaded. We did an extended column test (dug a bit deeper than 90cm as we were in this consolidated layer) and got some interesting results. About 30 cm down, we had a weak layer crumble. More notably about 115cm down we got a clear break of the isolated column. Skiing was still quite good, but variable. Some areas punchy and grabby, some areas wonderfully light and powdery. I don't think our pit or probing was representative of the snowpack up there, my guess is it's closer to 200cm."