They Raised the Price of Admission

For some reason we didn't see anyone else when we went to look for today's avalanche problems in the Middle Fork.

• We saw glide cracks galore. We saw them in places we expected - on steep southeast facing slopes at middle elevations. We saw them places we didn't expect - on northeast-facing slopes near and above treeline. 
• The snowpack below 5,000 feet has been through several melt-freeze cycles with stout crusts or enough drainage established that water is passing through the snowpack to the ground. Rain overnight had saturated the whole snowpack up to that elevation, and we sunk through, but couldn't trigger so much as a roller ball.
• Once we hit the middle elevation band (5,000-6,500 ft) we found cohesionless wet snow to the ground with only the faintest hint of crust on south and west aspect. The snowpack is thinner there from seasonal stripping by prevailing winds. It was the kind of snow deep wet loose avalanches are made of.
• At those same elevations, but on north and east aspects, we found 4-6 inches of dry snow becoming wet for the first time. We easily triggered large roller balls and a small wet loose avalanche. 
• We dug a snow pit to look at old persistent weak layers on a northeast aspect at 5,800 feet where they were only buried about 28 inches deep. We couldn't get them to propagate in extended column or propagation saw tests. Interestingly, we found buried surface hoar in one end of our pit, but not at the other.

The "skiing" on the way down was knee-wrenchingly dreadful. I wouldn't do it for fun.