Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Cracking
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Our intention was to traverse from West Porter to Thaynes, but as we worked our way to the north just below the steep terrain near Thaynes Peak, we encountered larger and larger debris fields from natural sluffs/avalanches that had run through the trees. I really couldn't see the starting zones to see if there were crowns or if they started near the ridge or part way down. One of the debris fields left snow plastered 6 feet high on the uphill side of a big conifer. Whether this was sluff or an avalanche, it was too big to manage, it was definitely big enough to hurt or worse. At this point we decided it wasn't worth crossing the steep terrain necessary to gain the ridge to Thaynes and we carefully backed out of the terrain and headed back down West Porter where 30 or more of our closest friends were skiing. It was just too stormy to get the camera out for pics of the debris.</p>
Snowpack
The snow was very deep and slightly inverted. The skiing made for great face shot photos, but was otherwise slow and pretty dull with full on pig wallow at times. The cohesion on the skin track was much better than yesterday.