Blue Lakes

We rode out Blue lakes rode for a while to gain some elevation in hopes to escape yesterday's rain crust. Despite our best efforts we still found the rain crust at the top of Cole bowl summit at 9200'. There was a mighty 1cm of snow on top of the crust above 8500' but no greater then that. At the top of Cole bowl ridgeline there was a large debris pile below the cornice. We ran into a party at the top that was there on Tuesday and said that the debris was not there and happened yesterday during the weather event.  From the summit we could also see a debris pile from the cornice of Elephant's Graveyard . Also at the summit the trees were covered in ice and rimed particles.  We traveled around the backside of Cole bowl to Polaris bowl and stopped to take a break on a South facing aspect near ~9000', the HS in this area was ~150cm and by this time 1300 the ice and snow was starting to melt off of the trees creating snow bombs. As we headed into Polaris bowl there was another debris pile mid-slope from cornice fall.  At all three locations of debris piles listed above none of them had signs of stepping down to any other layer within the snowpack showing no crown lines at all. Throughout our ride we saw lots of snowmobilers, skiers and snowboarders riding and there was no signs of instabilities from there tracks on mostly N-facing aspects. 

Three debris pilesfrom cornice falls observed on Cole Bowl, Elephant's Graveyard, and Polaris Bowl. All recent cornice falls. No crowns were observed around these areas.