January 27
Willow, West Monitor, McDonalds, Dutches Draw, Beartrap.
Elevations, slope angles and aspects
7600-10300', angles over 35°, all aspects.
Snow conditions
2-4" new snow over a variable base.
The new snow was right side up and bonded well with ski cuts producing only minor sluffing.
Off aspects and south facing had a crust from warming prior to the storm, mostly supportable.
Wind during the storm added some shallow drifts on the lee side with impacts well down off the ridges.
A little surface sluffing resulted from cornice kicking. Natural activity was limited.
Daytime heating may have crusted areas exposed to the most sun.
Weather
Clear to partly cloudy skies, cool temperatures with light wind from the west.
Avalanche activity
No recent activity but did have some good views of older slides.
The pocket in Wet Monitor averaged less than 2' with a small area drifted in quite a bit deeper. It was not a "repeater". An earlier cycle appeared to have released a slide from the far east side of the bowl.
McDonalds had two separate cycles from explosive control work.
The slide on Dutches cone took out the west side of the bowl leaving the entire east side intact.
The meadows chute area in Silver Fork had numerous patchy shallow slides from the last storm,
with crowns observed both near the ridges and well down on the lower sections of the slopes.
Coupla pockets in Beartrap.
Evaluation
Snow was mostly stable. There were a number of areas avoided, insuring safe travel.
Stout bridging over old faceted snow suggests increased difficulty of stability evaluation.
Larger trigger or hitting the "sweet spot" may produce avalanche in areas that haven't.
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