Various

The objective of this tour was to assess the probability of wet loose avalanches and examine the extent of the wind affect from last Tuesday.  Overall the snow on the Peaks and Inner Basin has been rearranged by these high winds.  In some places, such as northwest facing slopes skin tracks and boot packs have been completely covered and erased, on west facing and some north slopes in the Inner Basin upslope winds have turned prior skin trackss into wind blown anti-tracks.  Many east faces are now wind rippled and hardened wind board, but the sun is quickly softening these slopes.  A couple of small D1 wet loose avalanches were observed on east facing terrain, but in general, the probability of wet-loose releases was low.  Not surprisingly, south-facing slopes at and near treeline showed the greatest probability of wet loose slides.  Some wind slabs near ridgelines were slightly reactive, but the wind-deposited snow was not cohesive enough to release in anything larger than microwave size chunks.  Similar material is scattered throughout the Humphrey's Cirque on steep slopes of various aspects.  In general stability was good to very good.

The snowpack is generally still cold above 10,000' with 10 cms below surfaces temperatures averaging around -5 degrees C.  The high winds from Tuesday have once again rearranged snow on the mountain.  Most open slopes are riddled with wind ripples.  Smaller protected chutes and gullies are more uniform and north facing shots have newly distributed snow on the leeward side of rock outcrops.  Any slope with a southern tilt is experiencing melt-freeze conditions.  Although winds were moderate on ridgetop and valley bottom locations, the overall weather was quite pleasant and spring-like.  South facing aspects were softening by 11:30 AM.  Snow surface conditions were smooth and frozen on northwest facing slopes, making for challenging skinning.  Snow surfaces on north facing slopes harbored 3-5" of cold wind distributed snow.  Snowpack depths on south facing terrain at 11,500' were averaging 120 cms.  No persistent weak-layers were observed in the upper 100 cms of the snowpack on east facing slopes.  The wind distrubuted snow and old-snow interface is still not fully bonded even on south facing slopes.  This may have contributed to the long running wet loose avalanches in the Humphrey's cirque last week.