Observation: NWAC Forecaster

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Weather Summary

Calm in the morning, with a switch to westerly winds around noon. Afternoon, winds were steady in the moderate range with broken skies and quickly warming temperatures.

Snowpack Observations

The new snow appeared uncohesive and well bonded to the recent layers up to our high point at 4,400ft. We could Identify the Valentines Crust with some weaker snow above and below it on sheltered northerly aspects, but the crust was quite stout and the weak snow wasn't all that weak.
Winds were transporting some snow at our elevations, but warm temps were combatting to settle out any fresh windslab instabilities in-situ.
With both of these potential instabilities, higher elevation was likely to be a different story today.

Any snow surface that received sun in the afternoon quickly became moist. We noted that the sun was creating more cohesive snow than we found earlier in the morning. We did find some decent cracking and clean shears on the recent sun crust on a SSE aspect at around 4,000ft at one point.
Below about 3,000ft it got a bit manky even in the shade by 1:30pm and we could trigger heavy wet loose slides on steep slopes.