Mammoth Area-Sherwins, Mammoth rock

With low light conditions, stuck to the trees today ~9500-10000ft and found fantastic powder skiing conditions.

HNS=20cm avg, near and adjacent to lee ridgelines =30cm. There was some crossloading and pockets of soft slab where terrain captured new snow from both the prevailing SW winds and the N and NE wind that started early in the morning. I was able to get some soft slab pockets to move, all averaging around 30cm deep, but not very wide and nothing slid more than 50-100ft, nor picked up much volume. There was no whoomphing, cracking or other signs of instability while touring up on the Sherwins.

Although the Sherwins still do not have much overall snow, this past weeks wetter small storms and continued settlement of the old snow provided supportable skiing and decent coverage in concave features and protected old growth timber glades. Snowpit showed good bonding of our past two storms (12/21 and 12/24). No surprise as they came in wet, especially 12/21. It was nice that the the Christmas eve storm was right side up and started wet and finished cold. There was some fairly moist to wet snow on the bottom of the pit today, likely from warmer ground due to local geothermal presence.