The slight clearing last night turned the grains near the surface into sugary facets beneath a thin breakable rime crust, and last night's showers dropped a few centimeters of new snow with graupel on top of it. Above 650m, the layers beneath the surface were firm enough for good travel, while lower elevations had a semi-frozen melt-freeze crust that grabbed skis mercilessly.

Of three blocks we cut and dug, two ran into boulders and could not be used. We had one successful AK Block. It went on the second hard jump at average shear quality (AK5Q2) on the 38° slope. The fracture was deep, 67 cm down. It went on top of the wet melt freeze layer above the November thaw crust, right where a surface hoar layer sat on the facets before the December 8 rain, and at the top of the layer that fractured in our December 11 tests nearby.

We did get two large whoompfs today at about 600m elevation in a brush patch where wet melt-freeze was collapsing beneath a thin refreezing crust, but had no whoompfing or collapse at higher elevations, and no other signs of instability.

Our slope and traveling tests had no results on slopes up to 50°.

Our pit tests showed strength +, stress ~, energy +, and structure - (+ being a sign of snowpack strength, - being weakness, and ~ being neutral). Slab tests results were 4 to 5, depending on the layer we tested. That means irregular crumbling near the load point, or irregular breaking of less than half the undermined area, signs of low ability to propagate fracture. It seems that the loading is low enough and the slab relaxed enough that even though the structure is weak and there is a deep weak layer, it is not very sensitive now. Watch for any rapid changes, and beware the weak bond of the near surface facets and thin rime crust at 107 to 108 cm when they are loaded.