Mt. Baldy

A handful of natural D1.5 to D2 slab avalanches on windloaded slopes from the storm. In the Ruby Range and Upper Slate, these all appeared to be wind slabs. One near Angel Pass had a minor amount of stepdown.  Today, windslabs appeared to be trending towards stubborn; we got one collapse on a drifted slope, but otherwise, no feedback on a few test slopes.  In general, wind affect wasn't as bad as I expected; the snow surface is still soft (F+ or 4F-) and there's still plenty of terrain without significant drifting.  

A couple of pits on a windloaded SE facing slope showed non propagating results on mid-storm layers and above the storm interface (a 2 to 3 cm crust), down 70 cm under a F+ to 1F slab.  Interestingly, this slope produced a large collapse after conducting two separate pits on it. I suspect the collapse failed below the thin crust.  The 1F portion of the slab is from SW winds early in the storm, the later west to northwest winds built softer wind slab (4F to F). This latter wind slab was more common throughout the terrain but didn't produce signs of instability on test slopes.