Cascade Peak

Good visibility of a lot of terrain with today's clearing skies, and the natural activity that we observed from the last few days was exclusively on the slopes where we have highlighted with the persistent slab rose.  Although naturals came to a pause today, we observed a spectacular display of rumbling collapses and remote triggers, one of the more unique days in that regard.  Some of the highlights include a snowmobile remote trigger under Cabin Shot that popped about a dozen rollovers up to 2,000' away.  Another collapse on Cascade radiated across a couple of gulleys, changed aspects, and remote triggered a pair of avalanches 1,400' away.  We triggered one collapse that appeared to reverberate around Baxter Basin and return back to us 30 seconds later (but didn't pop any slopes).  Collapses became harder to trigger as we gained elevation, but with some harder stomps or sending multiple people across a wind eroded terrain feature, we could still get them.  

There was about 5" or 6" of very dense new snow (including graupel and occasional rime crusts) that produced minor cracking and ECTP results in stability tests, suggesting a thin storm slab problem today.  However, that problem paled in comparison to the persistent slab issue, which has settled and stiffened to about 50 cm thick with 4F.  Ski pen is about 4" to 6" now, not directly to the weak layer like it was a the last few days.  We did a couple of hasty tests on steeper southerly aspects to see how the new snow was bonding to the thicker crusts there and didn't see any notable results.  On lower angle southerly aspects, we got collapses because the crust was thinner and collapsible, and in one case, a collapse traveled over to a northeast facing slope and triggered a couple of remote slides.