Avalanches: Snow collapsed and avalanche was triggered from below while we were skinning. No burials or injuries. No one was caught.Best estimates are 100′ wide, 300 or 400′ in running length. Possibly D2. We never saw the crown up close, but estimate it was around 3-feet deep on average.
Weather: Sunny, light wind from SW.
Snowpack: Below 12,000′ on the south-facing aspect was a mixture of some occasional wind slab mixed in-between snow that was virtually spring-like – upper layers that were turning into rounds. Above 12,000′ was windslab or soft slabs on top of facets.

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Avalanches: No signs of instability observed across multiple slopes and aspects.
Weather: Few to scattered thin clouds. Light west winds. Mild temps.
Snowpack: Traveled across a variety of aspects above and below treeline to observe current snow surface. South aspects became moist yesterday at all elevations. Surfaces are quite firm above treeline and weak below treeline, consisting of:
-Pencil hard melt-freeze crusts (11/16 crust exposed due to scouring) on scoured south or southeast aspects ATL
-1F or pencil hard, small grained, wind packed rounds (wind board or old windslabs) on all aspects ATL, anywhere that winds had drifted or deposited snow, especially in gullies or rollovers ATL. This is the predominant snow surface above treeline right now.
-4F faceting sastrugi on scoured features on all aspects ATL. Became moist on southerly aspects.
-Fist hard 1 to 1.5 mm facets make up the entire snowpack on shaded aspects below treeline, with some decomposing graupel at the surface. Snow depth was less than 12″ BTL.

Weather: Not a lick of wind and warmer temps with stronger solar then the previous day.
Snowpack: Traveld through many different slopes in the upper OBJ drainage while simply probing for snowpack structure. Strong over weak structure would be very obvious in one location while 15ft to the side the layering would be much more uniform. This widely variable snowpack structure could be found on all slopes traveled, E, SE, NW, NE and elevations above. Collapsing was felt on many of these slopes, mostly while traveling over the slab margins. Though no natural or recent avalanche activity could be found in the area. So Persistent slab structure existed and could be found on the aspects traveled above, but the avalanche problem seemed to be very stubborn. Last weeks strong wind events largely lead to this variable snowpack structure. With the same slope being striped down to say, 40cm in one area and loaded with a hard slab over weaker facets say, 100cm deep only 15ft away from the shallower area.

Avalanches: 11/21/15 “we watched two skiers skin up and set this off early afternoon. The two skiers are visible at the top of the slide in this pic (barely). (no other information was provided, but if you look hard you can make out the old crown of the slide triggered early november just to the looker’s right of this slide -fx’r note)

Baldy slide (pic taken from CBAC facebook page)

Avalanches: No visible new slab activity.

Weather: Saturday was quite cold to begin the day. Elevation gain and solar kept air temp comfortable. Consistent light winds from the west near and above treeline. Didn’t see any snow transport occuring.
Snowpack: Highly variable on ascent track. Most notable was numerous large collapses near and above treeline in terrain that was loaded and significantly stiffened by the wind. A common theme with these collapses was the relative low angle terrain they occurred on. Quick probing showed very weak crusts underneath these dense wind slabs. Areas that were steeper had stronger crusts below the latest snow and we didn’t experience significant collapsing. Snow surface remained dry above treeline on SE aspect with nice riding conditions on terrain that wasn’t loaded or stripped by past few days of wind.

Avalanches: Saw numerous small wind slabs in extreme terrain on NW-N-NE facing, unsupported slopes in Baxter Basin, and below Schuykill Peak. Investigated largest, most significant slide in the area just north of Richmond Peak, in a feature some people call the “Martini Glass Coulior” or “chicken leg.” Looked like a few days old, natural avalanche triggered by rapid windloading. Ran over 1000ft. After investigation, looked like it failed on the Nov. 10th melt-freeze layer that formed from warm temperatures on this NE-SE facing start zone. ECT tests had no result. snowpack fairly deep here, 140-180cm deep, mostly 1F hard snow with moist facets near the ground (1-2mm).

Weather: Clear, cold throughout day. Light westerly winds above treeline all day. Solar radiation was strong enough to warm ourselves, but not to form surface crusts or moisten southerly snow surfaces.

Snowpack: Mixed bag.

BTL: Still thin, generally weak. Yesterdays dense 4″ of graupel added to lower elevations supportiveness while skinning and sledding. ski penetration ~20cm, never to ground unless in very shallow, rocky areas. HS ranged from 40-75cm.

N/ATL: Slab and snow depth increases with elevation. HS ranged from 65-150cm+. Strong NW winds last several days really moved and hardened snow above treeline, with 1F-P hard, slick slabs widepread on NE-E-SE-S facing slopes. Yesterdays graupel was being moved/rolled easily downslope with light winds, no slab formation within this most recent surface snow yet. Numerous large collapses felt and heard on flat areas NTL, but no signs of current instability ATL observed. Snowpack tests throughout day did not produce significant results, and moist facets near the ground were present everywhere we dug (NTL and ATL).

Avalanches: None
Weather: Clear, light to moderate WNW ridgetop winds. No snow transport
Snowpack: On S and SSE aspects above treeline: Snow surface remained dry. The 11/16 interface is a stout meltfreeze crust, 2-4cm thick, pencil hardness, across all terrain. Below the 11/16 crust is a 1.5mm fist hard facet layer, generally around 5cm thick. In some cases, there is another crust layer at the base. There is anywhere from 10 to 70 cm of recent, settled or drifted snow above the 11/16 crust. F to 4F in hardness, except in heavily drifted spots where it is 1F. In one pit location, we observed 1mm near surface facets above the 11/16 crust, and stability tests showed propagating results on this layer (ECTP12x2, Q1, 30cm deep). See video. We got a soft collapse near this pit location. A second pit location did not have these surface facets above the crust, and the recent snow appeared well-bonded. Stability tests showed sudden collapse results below the 11/16 crust in the facet layer. This crust was thick and strong enough that we did not get any collapses on it.