North Bridgers - Throne ECT and Obs

We toured and skied on the Throne today.  Ended up being a one and done as the snow depth there still isn't deep enough to cover hazards, we hit a lot of rocks.  This was our second attempt here, tried on Nov 17th and thought there would be enough snow by now but it seems strong winds have been stripping this area of snow as compared to Bridge Bowl for example.  Snow depth on the east aspects of the Throne was highly variable but most of the coverage was on the order of 12"-16" deep.  East aspects varied from breakable wind crust to some supportable snow/crust with F hardness wind affected snow on top.  The winds must have been pretty consistent, even the tree protected north facing lower elevations of the Throne were wind affected. The entire southern aspect of Naya Nuki also looked very wind stripped with large bare spot visible at mid elevation.  The upper elevation east facing aspects above the Throne were also very wind affected.  We dug a pit about 75' below the high point of the Throne and then skied the north facing gully back to the North Fork Brackett Creek drainage.  Included a map pic to show were the pit was located.

ECT Results

12/8/2022 11:50am

HS: 80cm (this area was wind loaded, 200' away in the gully the snow was 30-60cm deep)

Air temp: 20F  Sky Cover: Clear  Precip: NO  Wind: Calm

Elevation: 8300       Location: N 45deg 52.9547min  W 110deg 57.1631min

Heading: 330

Slope Angle: 30deg

0-25cm - 1F, some faceting at this interface

25-65 - 4F, faceting at a snow interface layer at 55cm (possibly a decomposing suncrust?)

65-80 - F, wind deposited snow, not much cohesion

ECTN 21 at the 55cm layer, very rough failure plane, no propagation

ECTX on the remainder of the column

Comments:  The area is so variably covered right now that this test was mostly for curiosity sake and gave us confidence to ski the north gully (lots of sharky rocks) and call it a day.