Judah Obs

We toured in the northern Judah zone today, with an elevation range of 7100-8100'. In the sheltered areas close to pass-level we saw a bit of 3-5mm surface hoar growth, although this quickly tapered out as we skinned out of the sheltered terrain (see pic #1). The skin up and out of the trailhead brought us through some pretty savagely scoured conditions, the wind-hammered icy crust on wind-exposed westerly aspects near ridgelines were especially slippery and treacherous to travel through. Pockets of wind deposited soft snow appeared here and there, these being much easier to skin on. We stopped to test small wind slabs and cornices from time to time, all of which we essentially unreactive to our kicks, except for a bit of minor cracking (pic #2). As we traveled higher, we were able to swing into the more sheltered areas where the snow surface was sheltered from the wind and held softer snow. We stopped to dig under the upper Wildflower Ridge and our snowpits mostly confirmed what we had been seeing throughout the morning- the new snow and windslabs are bonding and healing well (see snowpit), no major signs of instability was observed by our party today in the Judah zone. As the afternoon progressed, the wind picked up and started transporting a bit more snow over the Wildflower (see pic #3), and it became blustery and chilly by the end of our tour.