Avalanche Canyon

Toured up Maverick and down into Avalanche Canyon. Steep south-facing slopes were becoming moist by 10 am. The south faces of Cloudveil, Nez Perce and Shadow as well as the east face of Wister began actively shedding recent snow around 11 am with the start of some intense solar input (even with some scattered mid-lever cloud cover and fog). Multiple D1-D2 avalanches were seen in this terrain. Nothing we saw crossed over to the south side of the creek but fast-moving debris was presumably sliding on crusts. Nothing appeared to step down any deeper than recent snow but middle and upper-elevation steep southerlies were getting cooked. 

No wind slab was observed from the ridge but recent wind had stiffened a 3-inch wind skin from the ridge at 10,200 feet down to a couple of hundred feet below the ridge that was not shooting cracks or moving at all. We had moderate, non-planar hand shears in that north-facing terrain around 10,000 feet.  We did get a report from another party skiing nearby of an ECTP15 down 50 cm under a 4 finger wind slab in somewhat confined (maybe cross-loaded) northeast-facing terrain at 10,500 feet at the top of a couloir. That team aborted and did not ski the line.

A few older loose snow avalanches were also observed in N/NE facing terrain at middle elevations that looked to have slid in the last couple of days.

Moving forward, even though south-facing terrain received some solar input today, I would expect similar activity tomorrow at all elevations especially given tomorrow's weather forecast of fewer clouds and warmer temps (above freezing at 10k feet). With enough water moving in the snowpack, particularly on steep south-facing lower-elevation terrain with buried crusts, it might not be out of the question to see some wet slab activity.