Recent avalanches on Great Northern

Wet or moist snowpack up to 5,500 feet, less than 30 cm thick, homogenous, and no avalanche concerns.  Above 5,500 feet, the snowpack was dry and averaged about 50 cm thick.  In the terrain that we traveled on, we found a uniform snowpack with no obvious weak layers on south and west aspects up to 7,000 ft.  On NW to NE aspects, basal crust/facet layers prevail, buried by slabs ranging from 0 to 70 cm thick, depending on windloading patterns from predominately NE winds.  Basal facets were generally weaker (Fist or 4F) and larger grained (1.0 mm) below the Halloween crust, and we found a mix of rounds or rounding facets (<.5mm, 4F- to 1F) above the crust.  Neither layers were reactive in stability tests conducted at two different locations (See profiles).  In a crossloaded gulley, we found up to 12cm of dense, freshly drifted snow and initiated phonebook-sized cracks underfoot.   We steered away from suspect windloaded features.

We observed about 5 natural soft slab avalanches that likely ran Thursday or Friday, on windloaded NE aspects above treeline.  These likely ran on Thursday's storm interface, estimated 6-12" deep, and produced D1 to D1.5 debris piles (SS-N-R2-D1.5-I).   One of these shallower slabs stepped stepped down to the ground on a rock slab, about 2 feet deep and produced a larger debris pile (SS-N-R2-D2-G).