We went up the Middle Fork corridor today to view recent slides, shred some crust, and bobsled in the trees.
The morning started with light winds; by the time we were at mid-elevation, the wind was gusting into the high 30s.
At mid-elevation, the snow from Sunday had been blown around and deposited into 6” to 8” soft wind slabs.
There was lots of debris at the bottom of avalanche paths, but it was hard to spot the crowns in upper mid and high elevations from the recently drifted snow.
The snow underfoot was variable. Sometimes there was a 2” thick crust from 1/13 directly under the new snow on Sunday. Other times; there was a couple of inches of soft dry snow sandwiched by the 2” thick crust on the bottom and a thinner breakable crust on top.
We saw 20ish D2s, 2 D3s, and two D3.5s
The slides on S facing aspects were considerably larger than ones on N facing aspects. All the D3s and D3.5s were found on S facing aspects.
Slide paths with start zones above 7200’ only produced D2s.
The skiing left a lot to be desired but was manageable.
Saw about 20 D2s to D2.5 on both N and S sides of Rescue Creek. We did not spot any crowns but assume some of these started as slab avalanches.
We did not spot a crown, but the large debris pile makes us wonder if this started as a slab avalanche.
