Patrol day:March 5th

Snowy Range

Trail: Skied Centennial Ridge. Left VIS at noon.

Ski Conditions:  Weather was quite warm; after a mile had to take off boots 
and let steam out of socks and boots; tape up heels. The forest service road 
was completely covered with snow, but that may not last too much longer. I 
skied with Emma; Mike's dog. I saw no skiers or snow mobilers the whole day; 
but snow mobile tracks covered my ski tracks from the ski in.

snow pit data

I dug a snow pit 30 feet below the crest of the hill on the first slope just 
to the south of the question mark. The slope was between 15 and 20 
degrees,east facing.

0 -8 cm     consolidated snow
9-10 cm ice layer
(15 cm)     slide layer
10-30 cm    consolidated snow
30-31 cm    layer of slush
30-72 cm    sugar snow
(50 cm)     slide layer
72-73 cm    layer of slush
73-90 cm    depth hoar

I was surprised when I performed the shovel shear test to see two layers 
slide at 15 and 50 centimeters; these layers were inbetween the layers of 
slush. I have no temperature data but I assume that from 30 cm to 90 cm the 
temperature was close to 32 because of the presence of slush. The top layer 
of ice at 9 cm did not slide but was consolidated.

I would evaluated the avalanche hazard for Centennial ridge to be moderate to 
high.