Partially intact buried surface hoar

Around Border Ruffian today, hand shears and shovel tilts on the open slopes facing N and E consistently showed the buried surface hoar layer 4-8" from the surface. The snow above was unconsolidated, so I chose not to try CTs or ECTs. I did carefully excavate to backlight a few thin slivers of the top 12" of snow to look at the buried surface hoar layer, and found it to be only partially intact.

Near and above treeline, wind slab was encountered and made for bad riding conditions. Winds at these elevations today were moderate and from the east, but no current wind transport was observed. Near and below treeline, we found better riding conditions but still the occasional pocket of wind slab. Test slopes did produce unstable results on wind slab, with no buried surface hoar observed at the failure layers - just denser wind blown snow on top of less dense snow.

Temperatures remained cold today, and riding conditions were still good on sunny slopes.