Quick report
East-facing couloir in the books - ECT-X, small 2" wind slab on top that failed ~ CT-5, but solid snow under that all the way to 100 cm. We skiied it with no signs of instability other than the small wind slab on top West-facing couloir in the books - CT-4, CT-13. CT-4 was for a 3-4" windslab on top, CT-13 was for a 2nd windslab roughly 12-14" down - ECT-10, ECT-15. ECT-10 was for the 3-4" windslab, ECT-15 was for the 12-14" windslab We promptly bailed off the route after digging that pit....no avys triggered, shooting cracks or whoomphing Overall the west facing slopes in the Books need a few more days of the melt/freeze cycle to bond those wind slabs before they'll be safe to ski
Avalanche
We spent a day sledding out to the Bench glacier and the Books....en route to the Bench glacier we hit several small, steep test slopes (~ 10' tall) and remotely triggered 2 small wind slabs. The 2nd wind slab was triggered from ~ 20-30' away by the snowmachine. The slopes were in the gully running out of the Bench glacier and were west facing around 3,500' On the Bench glacier, we didn't see any signs of recent avys, but we stayed away from anything steep enough to slide and didn't do any snowpack tests In the Books, we skiied an east-facing couloir and found no signs of instability, we tried to ski a west-facing couloir, but when we dug a pit, we found enough wind slabs that we bailed. If you see the pit 1/3 of the way up Book 1, that was our pit