Hwy 2 Corridor

It was easier to trigger avalanches than expected. Skinning up, we didn't see any obvious signs of instability, and we didn't in pits either, as the surface layers were so low density. The main red flag was simply all the recent snow we just received. Only as we worked our way along the top of a small ridge to further investigate snow stability did we find that snow easily cracked out in front of our skis, and in steeper and less supported areas that snow slid.  Avalanches were all small and uniform in crown depth, 10" deep. They were very soft slabs. We couldn't detect any wind-effect where these slabs were failing. 

Test slopes that were steep- but not quite steep enough -produced cracks, but when they got a little steeper and less supported, small avalanches resulted. There were no obvious clues leading up to the point, aside from the large amounts of snow we'd recently received.

From 2500ft there was 6" of snow, and there was over a foot by 3000ft. By 4000ft there was at least 6ft of snow. 

I dug two pits at just over 4500ft on a north and south aspect. They both had the exact same snow depth surprisingly, 370cm (over 12ft). Both pits had the same depth down to the Atmospheric River crust, which was about 15cm (6") thick frozen melt forms, with large grained moist and soft  melt forms beneath that.

The only major distinction was 2 thinner crusts from recent clear skies in the south-facing pit. In both pits for test results I found only shallow storm snow instabilities in the top foot of snow.