The surface has now refrozen and did not thaw today. Radiation cooling of the snow surface is keeping it frozen despite above freezing air temperatures. The surface is yielding enough to take a ski edge in places, but is hard and fast, and in some areas it is hard to edge or kick steps in.

We saw none of the seven signs of instability and had no results on our slope and traveling tests.

We turned back from seeking the sunshine atop Mt. Stewart due to the risk of a sliding on the hard icy surface and did our pit studies in a less than ideal spot below a cliff band in the upper N Bowl because the rest of that slope had slid out about a week ago. The snow there was much deeper there than average and the layer sequence was not very representative due to spindrifting from above, but the layers near the surface were our main concern and we could test those quite well in that location.

We did one AK Block which fractured on multiple hard jumps at average shear quality (AK6Q2) on the 40° slope, just below a thin crust above a thick soft moist thawed melt freeze layer 13 cm below the surface at 130 cm on the graph (230cm true height). It scored two out of five lemons, indicators of structural weakness. Our slab test scored a low energy #4, breaking out less than half the undermined area in an irregular fracture.

We judged the strength to be +, the stress to be +, the energy to be +, and the structure to be +, where + indicates a strong snowpack, ~ is neutral, and - is weak.

The major danger right now is losing your footing and sliding, especially with the many exposed rocks. Ice axe and crampons are advisable for any serious mountaineering.

The next snow may slide on the icy melt freeze crust as well, depending on whether the temperatures as it comes in allow it to bond or not.