Avalanches: No recent avalanche activity observed. Plenty of crowns from Feb 1 cycle still visible, and a handful of old wet loose, some reaching D2 in size that gouged to the ground, from our mid-February warm-up on southerly aspects N/BTL above Copper Creek. One D1 wind slab on a crossloaded N aspect above treeline on White Rock that probably ran around 2/23.
Weather: Warm temps. Light westerly winds. Thin few clouds this morning increased to thin overcast by late afternoon.
Snowpack: W/NW slopes near treeline were all weak facets, ski pen occasionally to the ground. Thin, unsupportive melt-freeze crusts emerged on due west NTL. Surfaces are variable above treeline; lots of pencil or knife hard wind board, some soft sastrugi, meltfreeze crusts starting on W aspects and becoming thicker towards SW. Very small surface facets above these surfaces on northerly tilts. A lot of NW facing slopes ATL are blown out to dirt. I jumped onto a SW slope below treeline in the afternoon. The top few inches were very wet, but the snowpack was still supportive. No signs of instability.

Avalanches:
Weather: Broken skies after a brief snow squall between 8 and 9 am. Near but below freezing temps with a cold moderate to strong wind blowing from the SW but swirling and sometimes blowing upslope from the NE
Snowpack: Skier triggered a couple small facet sloughs in steep terrain. Otherwise no avalanche problems found as there is very little strength in the snowpack. Ski pen from 0-20cms. Snowpack depth averaged 120cm, but previously avalanched areas had as little as 35cm.
Not nearly enough new snow to form windslabs. Crusts did not soften even at low elevations.

Weather: Scattered to broken cloud cover. Mild temps
Snowpack: skier triggered a few very small facet sloughs in steep terrain. Otherwise no avalanche problems found. Ski pen around 5cm on 99% of slopes traveled. Some snow surfaces were a form of sun/temperature/wind/rain very soft crust, over 4f snow below, while others were just weak near surface facets over similar snowpack structure below. HS dropping, in the 70-80cm range.

No new avalanche observations looking around the range form the Gothic road area. Just brown snow problems.

Avalanches:
Weather: Scattered to broken cloud cover. Mild temps. Moderate winds with no transport.
Snowpack: On a north aspect near treeline, the snowpack was generally shallow (due to wind scouring and/or previous avy activity) and very weak, lacking any persistent slab structure presently, but will be concerning if we get a future load. Facets ranged from 1mm to 4mm in size, mostly fist hardness, capped by a breakable wind crust; trapdoor skiing and pole plants easily to the ground. No signs of instability except minor facet sluffs and a few pizza box wind slabs in gulley features.

Avalanches:
Weather: Calm. S-1 snowfall. 2/29/16 5 to 645 pm.
Snowpack: Trace of graupel to <1 cm of new snow

Avalanches: none
Weather: Clear, calm, still cold start to morning but warmed nicely into upper 30s. strong solar.
Snowpack: SNowpack consisted of cold settled powder still on northerly facing terrain, with some thin temperature crusts in lower elevation trees. Dug one pit in a NNE facing, 40º slope in upper funnel of Pencil Coulior, 11,700ft… generally all large grained facets with 6mm surface hoar on top. F to 4F+..ECTX. some minor facet sluffing, and very isolated 2″ windslab from Tuesday’s snow and wind. generally stable.

20160228AxtellSH

Avalanches: Semi-recent cornice fall on an East aspect ATL triggered a D2 Persistent Slab sometime in the past week.
Weather: clear, calm, warm
Snowpack: Southerlies NTL & ATL had 10-15cms of variably softened surface snow over a supportive crust at 1130. Windslabs, Dust, and Corn on Southerlies all seemed to be on the surface in the alpine and softened at different rates due to their varying densities. By 1300 these slopes were getting punchy and sloppy with SkiPen becoming about 30+cms. Northerlies are staying dry and are mostly old windslabs slowly faceting away on the surface, above mostly all facets on steep shaded slopes. Low angle BTL starting to get cooked by late Winter sun angles and high temps.

Avalanches:
Weather: Few clouds increased to overcast by late morning, and decreased to few by sunset. Moderate SW winds, no snow transport. Mild temps
Snowpack: Thick and supportive crusts on southerly aspects remained mostly frozen today due to increased cloud cover and winds. Dusty snow surfaces softened by mid-day and lower elevation were soft in the p.m., with 2-3″ of ski pen. No signs of instability.

Avalanches: No new cornice activity
starting to get sloughing 45* N facing in soft faceted snowpack.
Some small wet loose on Mineral (S) under the cliffs
Weather: Calm to light NW, Intense Solar
Snowpack:

Avalanches: Good views of a lot of the forecast zone today with no new avalanches observed.
Weather: Clear skies. Moderate NW wind in the morning eased to light by PM.
Snowpack: On South aspects N/ATL: The combination of thick upper crusts (~6″ thick) and faceting slab below made it difficult to find any kind of concerning PS structure. Crusts began to soften but remained supportable around 12:30 to 1:00, and were refreezing by 3:00.
On West aspects ATL: Probing around found some discontinuous pockets of lingering PS structure between faceted out slabs. Thin but supportive crusts on the surface (~1″ or so)
Start zones on NW aspects above treeline look mostly blown out down to dirt or bushes. Gulley features still holding enough snow to potentially have PS structure, but didn’t go onto any of those slopes.
No signs of instability observed.