Andesite 7550 20210123

We found 3-6" of soft snow across the lower Andesite area today.  Near the ridges was evidence of some thin, soft wind slab and also a lot of scouring from today's East wind.  NE ridges were scoured up high, but were holding wind slab brought from the SW yesterday and last night lower in areas sheltered from the East wind.  Nothing alarming where we were, but we didn't observe any terrain with large fetch.

When we dug we were somwhat surprised to see the degree of faceting that has occurred in the last week or snow.  Nearly all of the layers were predominantly facets and digging our pit was like digging into a bag of old sugar.  Like old sugar, there were some clumps that were sticking together a bit, and generally the snowpack is hard and strong.  We couldn't force a failure across any of the columns we tested - CTN and ECTX.  It seems like this snowpack could withstand a sizeable load of new snow in the future, but this is a small sample of the snowpack and only time will tell!