Western Wallowas near Catherine Creek

Spent the past 4 days in the Western Wallowas in the Catherine Creek drainages from 3,000'-8,000'.  Snow totals at 7,500' since 1/5 are around 3' of new snow.  Numerous red flags were observed including moderate winds transporting snow and building slabs, rapid snowfall, and one collapse.  

60-90cm of new snow since the storm ramped up on Jan 5.  We've found pretty good stability in our snowpack tests, but the middle of the snowpack does have some weak snow (facets) around a variety of melt-freeze crusts.  The 12/4 rain crust has some weak snow in the upper portion.  This is a challenge because the snowpack structure isn't fantastic, but the pit results are necessarily demonstrating an unstable snowpack.  The storm tonight into tomorrow should help settle out how strong the snowpack is.