Lionhead Super Bowl Sunday

Pleasantly surprised with what we found at Lionhead. Snow depths are 120-150 cm (4-5 ft)

Good visibility let us look at a huge area today and dig snow pits in 6 places mostly looking at the mid to late January near surface facets. They are generally buried ~2 feet deep.

Locations, test scores, and hardness for this layer:

• E aspect at 8700' ECTN, Fist hard
• NE aspect at 8900' ECTP25, 4F hard
• NW aspect at 9000' ECTP18, 4F hard
• N aspect at 9000' ECTN, 4F hard
• S aspect at 9000' nsf's have frozen perc columns over 10cm tall through the layer
• E aspect at 9200' ECTX, 4F hard

We saw two recent shallow wind slab avalanches. No recent slides breaking deeper. The extra loading from wind could make this nsf layer more likely to fracture and produce an avalanche. Otherwise, it seems to be losing its sensitivity and will only improve this week with minimal loading.

Weak snow deeper in the snowpack has gained hardness and I doubt it will make avalanches unless it gets a massive load very quickly.

Snow conditions are 5-star