Avalanches:
Weather: Some weather to report but nothing nice with light snow but steady strong wind driving and drifting snow. A dense now with 4″ new and water of 0.34″. Gusting into the 40 mph area but in general; a steady 10-15 mph W wind. Snow pack at 42½”, far below average for this date in what has become a very dry winter.

Currently light snow and steady wind with obscured cloud cover. A nasty day. billy
Snowpack:

Avalanches: Nothing new. No signs of instability today.
Weather: Clear in the a.m. built to broken skies. Light to moderate westerly winds. Warm temps.
Snowpack: Frozen surfaces thawed on E and S aspects, but not saturated enough for wet loose concerns. Went hunting for concerning persistent slab structure on northerly aspects and it was hard to find. Slab thickness over the 3/6 interface increased from ~6″ in the southern end of the Ruby Range, up to 15″ in the northern end. Everywhere that I dug down to the 3/6 interface on northerly, above-treeline slopes I found this slab well-bonded to a firm wind crust. The one wind-protected slope where I expected to find a worrisome structure with NSF had already slid naturally during our last storm. Did not travel on any wind protected near-treeline slopes which seems the most likely place to find the problem still. Below treeline on a north aspect, the slab was moist, ~8″ thick over a 1″ thick friable melt-freeze crust , with dry, 1.5mm facets below. Moderate ECTN failures on these facets. Concerning structure if we see more load. Surfaces for this incoming storm are generally smooth suncrusts/meltfreeze crusts, except for steep slopes below rockbands which are littered with rollerballs or wet loose debris, and north facing slopes which are still holding dry, settled powder.

Avalanches:
Weather: Clear in the am, 2pm overcast. No precip. Warm day 40f ,15-20 mph wind from the W above tree line.
Snowpack: Warm beginning increasing to hot was the theme of the day. Strong solar in the morning combined with only a 20f freeze overnight resulted in a rapid warming of the snow pack on East through south aspects.Small D1 avalanche observed SW facing terrain in Evans basin, skier triggered 15-20 cm deep. Snow on the East ridge of Evans basins at 1;30 was moist. Foot pen 25cm , ski pen 10cm. Roller balls from ski cuts. Wind kept the snow at higher elevations colder.

Avalanches:
Weather: clearer skies in the morning, clouds built throughout the day to scattered in the afternoon. Light winds, increased winds in the alpine. Temps where warm BTL in the low 30’s, winds kept things cooler in the alpine.
Snowpack: no real signs of instability, some signs of warming on southern aspects close to the waterfall area. Few roller balls. The tracks from yesterday were almost all filled in.

Avalanches: Nothing new observed.
Weather: Moderate westerly winds at ridgeline. Clear sky in the morning becoming partly cloudy to overcast in the afternoon.
Snowpack: Didn’t find any of those mythical near surface facets on the 3/6 interface while touring, mostly above treeline on northerly facing slopes. The 3/6 interface was most commonly a very firm wind board. Hand pits were not producing planner results and and the snowpack structure surrounding the 3/6 interface didn’t look to concerning. However we didn’t really travel on any sheltered or wind protected slopes that would have had a better chance of holding NSF at the 3/6 interface..

Snow surfaces consisted of decomposing particles, wind ripple, wind crusts and melt freeze crusts. Nothing overly concerning on the surfaces for the slopes we traveled

Avalanches: 1045: rollers below our skin track on east facing slopes below Gothic Mountain
11AM: Partner said I set off a 50-foot AS-WS-R1-D1 upon skiing the convexity on a moraine. He said it was slow moving. Occurred on same east face.
Weather: Before 11AM: clear, calm, very warm.
After 11 AM scattered to broken sky, Light winds, with some temperature drop
Snowpack: East/West facing-spring snow
north facing-winter snow

Weather: Dry and warm most of the week with Wednesday as the exception, with light snow showers and mostly cloudy to over cast sky and moderate southwest winds.
Snowpack: New storm snow from the prior weekend was generally in the 20cm range ATL and drifted up to 40cm on leeward slopes, or blown off of some other wind effected slopes. On northerly aspects the 3/6 interface was mostly a 5-10cm thick wind crust or wind packed particles capping a varying layer of facets below. Didn’t observe any concerning instability on this 3/6 interface and the new snow wasn’t a thick enough slab to worry about collapsing the wind crusts capping facets below. This general summery for northerly aspects stayed the same through the week

On Thursday an ATL easterly aspect was staying dry where it had any slight northerly tilt and turning to hot pow or moist to wet at the surface as it leaned more southeasterly. No concerning instabilities observed.

Avalanches:
Weather: High clouds, light SW winds at ridge top, Hot!
Snowpack: SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Lots of loose wet avalanche activity on S-SE aspects running on steep slopes from rock bands D1-1.5 in Size. Breakable crust in the am 9am on S-Se slope warming around 11am creating roller balls and small wet loose sloughs. NE-N-NE BLT warmed up quite a bit today with small Wet Loose actively. NTL an ATL no instability observed.

Avalanches: Lots of loose wet avalanche activity observed from yesterday and today. Mostly all D1-1.5 in size. All on steep slopes, but found at all elevations and even saw a few wet loose on NW-N-NE aspects BTL, where terrain was open to solar gain, steep, and rocky.
Weather: High clouds, light SW winds at ridge top, hot air T*
Snowpack: North & NW facing timbered terrain NTL & BTL, found a slight MF/Temp crust from yesterday, and moist snow in the top 10cms where slope angles were below 35* and gaining solar from high angle of incidence March sun. Surfaces on these aspects remained dry ATL as of 1300.

Avalanches: Skier triggered one small loose wet on a steep E aspect ATL. Looked like two D1.5 loose wet were skier triggered on the S face of Mt. Owen. Fairly widespread loose wet activity from yesterday on E, S, W aspects on most steep, rocky slopes N/ATL, D1 in size.
Weather: Hottest day of this year. Temps reached 50F at 10k and 38F at 12k. Calm to light winds. Few clouds built to scattered thin by late afternoon.
Snowpack: 3/6 crust remained frozen and supportive, but top 6″ thawed and became very wet, with shallow wet loose instabilities developing by 11:30 a.m. on east aspects and rotating around the southern end of the compass. We even observed rollerballs on NE aspect NTL today.

The two loose wet avalanches off the south face appeared to be skier triggered today (3/11). The other slides off the E/SE ridge ran naturally yesterday (3/10)

S/SE face of purple peak, with small loose wet avalanches that ran naturally 3/10.