Schallenberger Ridge Observations

We toured into easy terrain today to observe our new snow load on the existing rain layer. We started at Donner Lake's elevation level and toured up to 7400'. Along the way we observed ample cracking around ski tracks, presumably where the recent rain crust was cracking. Steep rolls and small test slopes were easy to trigger the storm slab, In steeper terrain we were able to get shooting cracks that ran 10 - 20' across slope. The largest result was intentionally triggered at the start zone of a steeper slope, with a good stomp into the snow we got shooting cracks and slab propagation 50', the slab ran around 250' downslope. It was approximately 30cm deep and failed at the new/old interface. Around midday the snowfall intensified and as we lapped this zone our tracks filled in with 2 - 3 cm per hour. During the course of our tour we were able to intentionally trigger numerous small D1 sized storm slabs on steeper pieces of terrain, it seemed that each was failing on the new / old interface. Given the protected and lower elevation of the terrain we observed today we did not see very much windslab activity, but we did have Moderate blowing snow for the duration of our tour.