Good News and Bad News at Mt Blackmore

We toured up to Mt Blackmore today to assess how the snowpack is reacting to the recent snowfall. We traveled into the bowl and up the SE face to the ridge. Strong winds were noted off of ridgetops, as well as at lower elevations, before popping out into the bowl. But the SE face below the ridge was remarkably less wind effected than we expected.

The good news: Hyalite was the clear winner from our last storm cycle, and we noted around 15 inches of new snow at 9700'. The bad news: in our snowpit, we got an unstable test result of ECTP 13 on a crust - facet sandwich below the new snow. Unfortunately, the snow that makes up the base of our snowpack is made up of several old crusts and facets.

Where we traveled, we did not note much wind slab formation. Beyond our unstable test result, we did not note any other signs of instability - no recent avalanches or cracking/collapsing beneath our skis.