Snowpack summary: Snowpack was similar to what we've been seeing throughout the advisory area. We found that overall surface conditions were highly variable throughout our tour; some places had a thin new rain crust, some had a punchy 1" wind slab, while others were dense new snow. We triggered a small soft slab on a small test slope while ascending the north side off the drainage. Slab consisted of dense, wind loaded snow deposited on top of our weak cohesionless snow that formed during the high pressure spell. We didn't see a lot of surface cracking but felt that our small test slope gave us bulls eye data to not venture onto wind exposed slopes with similar slope aspect (NE). We produced numerous skier triggered loose dry avalanches on wind sheltered slopes greater than 35 degrees. The last one ran close to 800 vertical feet down to the creek. All loose dry avalanches were easy to manage while skiing but moved extremely fast and could easily push a skier around who's not paying attention. Otherwise, lower angled, wind sheltered slopes skied the best.
Weather summary: Low cloud deck obscuring mountain tops, light snow (S -1)/ freezing rain, and overall light to calm winds. On ridgetops, winds were light and out of the SW while nearly calm down in the creek bottom.
Avalanche conditions: No natural avalanches visible today.
Traveled up Cascadilla Creek two-track and then into the basin proper via main summer trail route.
Skier triggered loose dry avalanches that were generally small but ran fast and far. The last one triggered ran approx. 800 vertical feet down to the creek bottom.
