The FAC Introduction to Avalanches Course held its field day near the summit of Whitefish Mountain Resort today. Students dug several snowpits on FAA Hill at 6700 feet on an east aspect and conducted multiple Extended Column Tests. Out of the seven ECTs, four resulted in propagation with moderate or hard force at the interface between the slab (~30 cm thick here) deposited during last Tue/Wed's storm and the pre-storm surface, which consisted of faceted snow formed earlier this month. Another three tests resulted in propagation with hard force on an impressive buried surface hoar layer now buried about 60 cm down.
