Gothic

Avalanches: Heard one large natural avalanche rumbling down the East a Face of Gothic around 2pm, but poor visibility all day limited observations. No other cracking or collapsing on short and very soggy tour.
Weather: Intense snowfall over last 24 hours with periods of 1″/ hour (S3), Air temp 3 deg C at 1300, consistently obscured skies and light to moderate northerly winds without significant snow transport in the valley bottom.
Snowpack: 1pm on flat terrain @ 9,600′ w/ HS 230cm and PF 50cm: 25cm of moist storm snow tops 20cm of wet snow over a thin, moist crust and an otherwise nearly homogenous and mostly dry snowpack. Compression tests produced hard PC results down 25cm on 3mm clustered melt forms and down 45cm on a thin layer of .5mm moist facets under the crust. Percolating water is not pooling on the crust here. Found Jan 19th surface hoar layer down 85cm, but CTN on this layer and ECTX 150cm deep. 30cm thick wet slabs failed easily under skies but showed minimal propagation on 35-40 degree small, well-supported test slopes.