Don't you think we Vaught to wait for more snow?

Went for a tour up the southern slopes of Mount Vaught.

• Travel & snow coverage was suboptimal below 5000'. Hiked/bootpacked/bushwacked to ~4800' before puting skis on our feet.

• Above 5000' we found a shallow snowpack topped with 4-8cm of new snow AND near surface facets within the storm snow.

• We dug two pits. One at 5800' and another at 6500'. Our lower elevation pit is the better representation of the current snowpack in this area. The upper pit location represents an annomaly where there was a surprisingly deep snowpack present (1.5m+). For example, less than 50 feet away from our upper pit, there was a large talus slope with less than 20cm and many rocks exposed. And as we approached this site, we were probing numerous areas that had 40-60cm at the same elevation/aspect. It seemed that we happened to dig on a terrain feature that catches a significant amount of snow compared to the rest of the slope. Even the snowpit itself vaired from HS 107 to HS 164 over a 1.5 meter distance. We chose to record a snow profile on the deeper side of the pit.

• Widespread rime forming on the snow surface (and hoarfrost on trees, picture attached) above 5500'.

• Winds were light from the south most of the day, however around 2:00pm, they were increasing to 25-30mph, still blowing from the south.

•  Our most noteworthy observation from the day was the near-surface faceting within our most recent storm snow. This faceting seemed fairly widespread betwwen 5000' and 6500' .We expect this to contribute to a weak interface underneath our next round of snow.