The Gorge 15k

Great skiing at the Gorge @ 15k with a lot of fresh snow on Saturday. We did not find any instability aside from sluffing on steeper terrain. The most recent storm snow was still not cohesive enough, however we saw small wind slabs starting to form near the ridge crests.

During the compression test we observed 2 distinct failures: CTE 6, resistant planar down 15 on new snow CTM 19, resistant planar down 35 on facets Below that we found a thick crust layer ~50cm deep however it was not reactive. We did not (surprisingly) find any buried surface hoar while digging the pit, nor in the numerous hand pits that we were digging during the up track on the N and SE aspects.