Jan 28, 2013, Mt Hood Newton

I skied Newton this morning, in blustery, cold conditions.  6-10 of fresh over a hard crust.  Since the coverage was thin I had little worries about stability.  One lap in the trees yielded expected results of too much crust, not enough new snow.  3 out of 10 on the fun-o-meter.  I decided to venture up to the face and check it out, as I was not getting much love from the trees. 

The winds were really picking up by the time I got there (about noon), and transport and slab building were well under way.  Doing some hasty pit work revealed a Q1 bed in most areas (semi-glazed smooth ice), with a couple spots showing a secondary weak thin crust above the thicker one with weakly bonded granules between the two.  The bond of the new snow to crust was not very good, and several ski cuts produced no movement, but shooting cracks on turn exits.  The snow in  this area was soft wind slab.  I had decided to be conservative and hug the trees along the right side of the first bowl, cutting left above the deep tough and dropping down through the trees, and across the drainage at the bottom.  This one gets a fun-o-meter of 6, mostly due to excitement, but some nice turns were had as well. 

With the next storm this area will be potentially dangerous.  The only thing missing at this point is enough mass to cause the bond, in it's current state, to fail.