Max's

Access is a challenge for Max's, and there's a stout crust up to around 2500'. I dug one pit right at treeline and found a warm and wet snowpack. There was about an inch of new snow on top of a supportable crust, with alternating layers of wet melt/freeze snow and moist, stiff rounding snow grains. The December crust layer was buried about 4.5' deep where I dug, and it was buried under multiple layers of pencil-hard snow. It would be really hard to impact this layer below 2500'.  It is still a concern at elevations above 2500', where the snowpack is not capped by the same really stout crust.

There were multiple recent wet slab avalanches at about 2000' elevation on the north side of Orca, and a handful of notable storm slab avalanches between 2500' and 3000'.