Fourth of July Creek

We found surface heating and moist snow surfaces on anything the sun touched today, but the consistent winds kept most surfaces above 8,000' from completely falling apart. While out, we observed a smattering of recent slab avalanches on shady aspects at both middle and upper elevations - evidence of the lingering persistent weak layers buried a couple of feet below the surface.

We saw various small wet loose avalanches that occurred within the previous 24 hours and spotted a handful of larger slab avalanches that probably occurred over the weekend.

Wetness: Snow surfaces receiving direct sunshine and protected from the wind were actively taking heat. Moisture was generally contained to the upper 5-10 cm while we were out (exiting around 2pm) and above 8000'. Previously wet surfaces had refrozen into very firm (P hard) melt-freeze crusts during the previous night. Wet subsurface snow was found in all locations below 8000'. Natural wet loose activity seemed to primarily be occurring on SE aspects due to the lack of a breeze.

Persistent Slab: We can't yet write this problem off on shady aspects. Most of the slab avalanches observed appeared to have wind contributing to the slab formation/failure, but broke wider than simple wind-slabs. Investigating the crown of the mid-elevation natural avalanches (avalanches tab), we found that they failed on the 2/8 facet layer.