Wishing for better visibility

We toured up Grant Ridge hoping to get views of the very large avalanche that was reported yesterday near Mt. Liebig. Unfortunately, cloud cover prevented views of that terrain. Instead we found continued storm instabilities, but not as active as yesterday. 

• Settled storm totals average 6” to 8” with drifts up a foot thick. Slabs were still reactive, but slab instabilities were seemingly more isolated to very steep rollovers where winds had drifted the snow. We produced cracking and triggered one small storm slab in that type of terrain.
• We triggered numerous small sluffs, some grew to D1.5 where they ran more than a few hundred feet in longer, steeper terrain. We also noted a few natural sluffs today triggered by brief periods of sun on southerly, rocky terrain.
• We managed both of these problems by skiing moderate slope angles (about 35 degrees), and only skiing steep rollovers in terrain where we could manage the potential consequences of triggering a foot deep slab.