Avalanches: Surface hoar/near surface facet sluffs on steep northerly aspects at 12,000ft.
Weather: Clear and calm throughout the morning. Sky’s transitioning to overcast around 1pm. S1 starting at 4:30pm.
Snowpack: Oooo surface hoar, you suck. Fairly widespread surface hoar beginning to be buried late this afternoon.. Looked to be cooking off on steep southerly aspects, but maybe not fully cooked. On south surface hoar had formed over a soft crust, on northerly aspects the surface hoar was forming over near surface facets.

South west aspect, surface hoar over a soft crust

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Northeasterly aspect at 12,000ft, surface hoar has formed over near surface facets.

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Avalanches:
Weather: Sunny skies and cool temps (no batts in the ol thermometer, but skinning in more layers than usual). Calm winds with a minor amount of blowing snow at ridge tops observable up toward the White Widow couloir.
Snowpack: No digging due to a bad back and late start (1200), but boot pen is less than Will’s ob from 1/15, at 25 cms. Settlement cones look to be about a foot tall on the Aspens in the valley. Roller balls off the West face of Gothic (and a skinner up with no tracks on the Spoon or W Face- hope one of you folks got on the East today!). HS at the top of the bowl was 240+. Some Southerly aspects picked up a weak crust (infer frowny face emoji).
The star of the show was widespread Surface Hoar everywhere, from the valley floor to ridge top. Up to 2 cms in size, and present even on sunnier Eastern aspects. The fog seems to have left us a present and I hope it deteriorates before the next round of weather. Keep your heads on a swivel out there friends!

Avalanches: Many loose snow avalanches on both sunny and shady aspects from small cornice failures and running from trees/rocks. Most of these were a day old (1/16/17). One of these stepped down to a slab on a lower eastern flank of redwell basin.
Weather: Foggy in the morning at the Kebler Pass TR. Climbed out of the clouds and into the sunshine for the rest of the day. Clouds lingered to the south and in valley bottoms. Fairly warm (25-30 F) on the way up to gunsight pass from. Cooler on shady aspects (20 F). No snow. Winds light and variable but seemed to be mostly out of the southeast.
Snowpack: Moist snow surface on sunny aspects all the way up to 12000 ft. Widespread surface hoar (some of it large) on all of the aspects we traveled on. I assume these will get baked off on sunny sides but they may persist on sheltered and shady aspects if they get buried.

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Avalanches: Where do we live?! Glide cracks on Whetstone and reported around east brush
Weather:
Snowpack:

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Avalanches: Loose snow avalanche city baby! Brings to mind Zach Guys favorite song, “its going down”, but mostly it had already gone down. East to northeast facing slopes looked to have the most activity. The biggest terrain produced D 1.5’s otherwise just D1 slufffs. Watched a few roller balls on southerly facing slopes before noon. As well as some previous loose snow avalanches as well.

viewed some large crowns on northeasterly terrain from the last cycle.
Weather: Not a lick of wind and clear sky. Overcast clouds hanging out just west of the divide and south of scarps ridge.
Snowpack: Didn’t found a single crust in the snowpack by probe while traveling on SE to SW between the elevations above. Probed to 260cm and never felt the ground either, through the terrain. No signs to instability observed in this terrain.

The outlier was an alpine ENE facing start zone at 12,450ft. Sure looked deep, but HS was only 140cm. Obviously this slope had previously avalanched but unfortunately the weak layer was still present. A 100cm F to P hard slab was sitting over 1 to 2mm faceted particles at the interface, with 3mm depth hoar at the base. CT11 SC on the depth hoar. CTM SP on decomposing stellars about 40cm down. No results at the new snow, 1-2mm faceted particles interface. Mostly bailed on the objective due to the poor structure.

The concerning structure on the ENE facing slope.

Looks deep, but isn’t.

Deep crown on Northeast aspect of Cascade Peak.

Lots of previous loose snow avalanches, mostly on east to northeast aspects.

large crown on north aspect of Pealer Peak.

Avalanches: See photo of debris from an avalanche that ran across Taylor Canyon near the dam. We believe this ran 1/12/17.
Weather:
Snowpack:

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Avalanches: Windshield tour of lower Taylor Canyon. Spotted 4 or 5 crowns from last cycle, D2 in size or less, on E to N aspects, which were probably the only slopes holding snow prior to the storm. See photos.
Weather: Valley fog, scattered to few clouds above the fog. Mild temps. Light ridgetop winds.
Snowpack: Natural rollerballs and small loose wet on SE aspects BTL. No other signs of instability.
One quick pit on SE BTL showed 75 cm of 1F slab over F+ 1mm moist rounding facets (Jan 1 interface). ECTX results, with a non-propagating BRK results with additional loading steps.

SE BTL. 1F 75 cm slab over F+ moist, rounding facets. Non-propagating results

Old crown. NE aspect BTL

Old crown. NE aspect BTL

Avalanches: Many visible natural “slough” like slides . Not very deep but ran a fair distance.
Weather: Calm , Sunny above the inversion.
Snowpack: Snowpack seems to be pretty solid . No signs of instability during our tour . Starting to see some surface Hoar developing