Silver Basin

After taking a few quick laps in the resort to get a feel for how the atmospheric river played out in the Crystal area, we toured up into Silver Basin to get a look at the true backcountry snowpack. Lower elevations are a bit grim, to be honest - lots of ground and hazards, icy crusts, and minimal snow. As I ascended, the icy crust turned into a breakable crust, and eventually, that disappeared and turned into more satisfying conditions of low-density snow with a wind skiff on top. Upon topping out in FFF under Threeway, we immediately saw the natural avalanche in the saddle where a skin track often gains the ridge of Silver Basin proper. That was bullseye information that we weren't headed up that way today. After digging and seeking out test slopes in wind-loaded terrain, we noticed a new avalanche next to the one from the morning. I later found out from patrol that they intentionally triggered it. We also noticed a slide coming off Threeway where we had seen it actively loading throughout the day. The slide crossed a skin track from that morning. 

I found roughly 2" of new snow that gradually increased to roughly 6" as I ascended in elevation. The new snow sat on a hard or breakable rain crust at lower elevations. A transition away from the crust was evident around roughly 5900' but depended slightly on terrain features. A thin wind skin capped the snowpack in exposed areas at upper elevations. Although I could get the snowpack to fail with compression tests, especially when cutting into prior crusts, I was uninspired by the results and kept my focus on the obvious wind slab problem at hand.