February 18

Porter Fork, Butler Basin, Gobblers Knob

Elevations, slope angles and aspects

6200-10400', angles over 35°, all aspects.

Snow conditions

Lower elevations are crusted, the road remains icy with little softening.

Mid and upper elevations, on the shady side, added an inch or so of fresh.

nose

South facing aspects softened with heating. Southeast was early corn around 1pm and went off quickly.

Other aspects were also short lived early corn but, remained supportable into late afternoon.

I carried a whippet and ski crampons. Neither were used.

A helmet, mouthpiece and ear plugs would have benn handy for mid and lower elevation exit

Weather

Another spring day, wind was light from the west.

Avalanche activity

broads

The rock slabs above the blue ice spit up a creep-glide slide.

slide-zoom

I always wonder, is it glide or creep? since free water isn't visible at the fracture and the slope below is unsupported.

Other activity was limited to surface sluffing on steep shady aspects.

Evaluation

Mostly stable snow other than the slide in Broads.

Weather guessers suggest snow late in the week so..

future stability is dependent on snow amount, bonding and wind effect.

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