General Observations

Lutak Zone: Really great snow conditions on shaded NE-W facing terrain where 10-15cm of F hard near surface facets make for fast and easy turns. Below the surface the snowpack is still mostly a mixture of crusts and facets although without a slab on top, we felt comfortable pushing into some steeper terrain. There is a defined layer of facets above a thick crust buried 20-30cm deep although tests proved non-reactive and there just isn't much of a slab at present. In the steeper terrain we noted many old crowns presumably from the last storm we had on February 21. Crowns were mostly confined to N and NW terrain and looked to be 25-50cm deep at the interface between old and new snow (photo attached). Solar aspects are capped with a melt freeze crust of varying thickness although below the crust, a winter snowpack still exists. In addition to the sun crust and near surface facets, surface hoar has been growing in flat and non-solar terrain. It's most developed in valley bottoms and lightly treed meadows below 2500', although a sheltered pocket in the alpine had very small (1mm) crystals growing on the surface.