Johnson Canyon Observations

Our AIARE 2 course toured into Johnson Canyon today to ski 20-28 degree terrain and make observations of snowpack instabilities.
 

Leaving the parking lot and starting up the canyon (6500') we observed roughly 6-8" of wet/sticky snow above a rain crust. The rain crust was breakable with the top of a pole. 

We first skinned up the West/Southwest face, on a lower angle ridge and observed strong winds, wind affected snow, and significant amounts of of blowing snow near the ridgeline. On top of Donner ridge at about 7600' we ducked into some trees to transition. We skied back down, mostly following our skin track. The first half of the ski we enjoyed some nice wind affected snow. About half way down the snow became quite grabby and sticky. 
 

We transitioned at the bottom of the slope, crossed the creek, and headed up a southeast facing ridge due west of donner ridge and our first ascent/descent. On the way up we noticed old debris, large roller balls, and a more recent natural wet loose slide. We encountered some small test slopes on the west side of the ridge on which we were able to trigger small slides that demonstrated a blend of wet loose/storm storm slab properties. We continued up the ridge to about 7200' where we observed some small cornice featueres over a steeper gully/slope. These appeared to have been recently broken. We stopped here, but looking up the ridge we observed much larger cornices and even saw a cornice with a well defined crack about 10' back from the lip.

We then dug two pits on a small 30+ degree roll over above a bench on the lee side of the ridge. We attempted some poorly crafted CT tests and observed some resistant planar fractures with moderate force (elbow/shoulder) about 45-50cm down from the surface in the new storm snow above the rain crust. 
 

We then skied back down the ridge, heading slightly south/southwest down off the ridge. The snow was quite sticky and heavy most of the way down.