Avalanchy in the Middle Fork

Morning tour with numerous instabilities had us choosing more conservative terrain than expected.

• About 6" new at upper elevations. The snow line started around 5500' and lowered to about 4000' through yesterday's storm. Variable winds had drifted the snow into denser slabs, but the last few inches of snow fell without wind and concealed the drifting patterns.
• There were more than a dozen natural D1 to D2 slides that ran yesterday, a mix of loose snow and wind slab avalanches.
• We got numerous cracks and slab releases on kick turns or test slopes in wind drifted terrain at upper elevations. Slabs were 6"-8" thick and breaking on low density snow left over from earlier in the week.
• Despite mostly cloudy skies, the new snow started to get moist at mid elevations on all aspects around 10 am. By 11 am, upper elevations were getting moist. On our way out, we intentionally triggered a couple of sluffs that entrained quite a bit of snow and grew to D2 in size. We left before noon because the wet avalanche danger was rising.