We went up Mt Stewart again today to check the effect of the new snow load on the weak layers we found two days ago. We found 20 cm of fresh light dry snow with almost no wind drifting or compaction.

The weakness just below the thaw crust from January 20 - 22 had strengthened enough that it did not show up in any of our tests today. Instead, the new snow from the last two days sheared off on the denser new snow that was on the surface on January 25. It produced some shooting cracks and mini-slabs on 40 - 45°+ slopes, but generally just sluffed off, leaving an irregular bed surface. The mini-slabs stayed small, less than 1 m beyond the tester's skis, and were only that big on slopes that had been undercut.

The principal deep weakness was still the December 23 - 24 faceted melt freeze crust and the facets immediately above and below it. But it tested strong, fracturing only after multiple hard jumps (#6) in both AK Block and Rutschblock tests on 36 - 45°.

We ran a series of four additional AK Block - Rutschblock pairs, reducing each AK Block by a 20 Kg size step. We got very good correspondence between block size and test value, indicating that our sizing theory is working out well in practice.

We found light, dry powder skiing on the descent, with perfect gradation from 70 Kg/m3 fluff on top to 100 Kg/m3 snow just below, on a base of 200+ Kg/m3. Apart from sluffs and minor shooting cracks on steeper rolls, we saw no signs of instability.

Those shooting cracks do serve as a reminder that this snowpack could become reactive with a little windloading, more snow, or thaw. Any windloaded areas out there may already be sensitive, but most of what we found today was new snow well bonded to a solid base.