Cliff Creek

Today falls into the Venn diagram overlap between utter fascination with something and fear of something. I think snowpack conditions like these are interesting to go out into the field and experience but also exercise a very wide margin with. I can recall a handful of other times when simply walking has caused trees to shake and echoing collapses across an entire slope of a mountainside. Today had a distinct tone in the sounds of the collapse that felt different, so I made a contingency plan and assessed the snowpack at a lower elevation on a west-facing aspect. Stability appears better at upper elevations due to maintaining an overall deeper pack, and things may trend in a better direction faster up high than at the mid and low elevations. The total height of the snowpack here (W aspect, 7K) was around 2 feet, the bottom 8-10 inches of which was well developed, basal facets bordering on depth hoar and capped with surface hoar. Each test failed at the surface hoar interface, but there's more than enough weak snow here to have a multitude of culprits across different aspects.  Most tests failed on isolation (ECTPV) with a few mixed results (ECTP2 and ECTP4).  Overall, the top slab of snow was fairly moist and hard, likely due to warming and settlement, making for a dense slab of settled snow on very weak facets. I noted >10 avalanches in the Hoback Canyon that are likely ~2-3 days old. 

I couldn't tread anywhere without causing large collapses that I could hear travel very far upslope of me. In the right terrain with the right well-connected slab, this could likely cause a large avalanche even from flat terrain below. The slope across the drainage did not have this problem as extensively, the terrain was gentler, had little overhead hazard, and offered safer riding.