Variety of Conditions in Deep Creek

With the strong NE winds continuing today, we went into the Deep Creek area. First, we traveled through sheltered low-elevation terrain and found consistent soft snow with surface hoar present on top of the snowpack in most open places. This new surface hoar gave us a good clue that the old surface hoar might also exist below the surface. When we dug into the snowpack at several spots at all elevations, we could find it, but snowpit tests targeting this layer did not produce unstable results. 

We started seeing wind-affected snow at the mid-elevations. These wind effects manifested as ripples or wind textures on the snow surface with a few spots of wind-packed surface snow. When we gained the ridge between Deep Creek and Pole Creek, dense wind slabs and irregular wind-scoured surfaces existed on both sides. The hard wind slabs sounded hollow, but we did not get any cracking or test slope failures when we kicked on small slopes with the stiff wind slabs. Looking out at the Sierra Crest, we could still see plenty of snow blowing across the ridges.