We returned again to the Mt Troy - Showboat area today to continue to track changes in the most interesting layers in the snowpack. We tested at a slightly lower elevation today to investigate the shallow but fast sluffs we had noted two days ago.

The sluffs were easily triggered by skiing on any slope over 38°. They were only 7 to 10 cm thick and very light, but fast and fairly large, up to 20 m wide and 100 m long. It turned out they were running on a thin soft sun crust from the warmest afternoons last weekend. Some small 1 - 2 mm surface hoar was present on top of the crust.

Otherwise, the snowpack was similar to that observed over the last week at our higher elevation sites, except that the faceted melt freeze from the December 23 - 24 thaw was a little harder, and it was frozen all the way to the ground, though the ground itself was not frozen.

After an overcast night, the temperature gradients and temperatures have moderated, but the facets are still fresh and crisp.

So long as any windloaded areas are avoided, this snowpack is most likely to sluff rather than produce slabs. But new loading is likely to produce an avalanche cycle. The existing facets and surface hoar with faceted melt freeze crusts will make a classic weak snowpack setup when a new layer is added.

For test level #6, multiple hard jumps, the American Avalanche Association guidelines suggest moving down the block. We find that hard jumps cause enough involuntary downward migration that trying to move down is likely to result in moving too far down, causing the block to crumble along its lower edge, a sloppy test procedure.

Note how the 193 cm skis' contact length does not span the 200 cm width of a Rutschblock. This makes the back cut more important.