Rae Wallace

Rallied for a couple of afternoon Rae Wallace laps and were rewarded with clearing skies, beautiful light, and wonderful snow. 

Coverage and conditions appeared to have improved drastically with this last period of snow. While still rocky and thin, we were able to ski through a few Rae Wallace chutes without mangling our skis or ourselves.  

Observed one skier triggered avalanche on west-facing Marmot on our way up the skin track. Solo skier triggered a small soft slab pocket at about 4200' that ran for about 600' vertical.

Observed 10-15'' of new, light snow throughout our tour. New snow is loose and unconsolidated for the most part. On some windward aspects, we observed light wind effect.

Surface hoar was observed on all aspects, but had appeared to have been knocked down by the sun on some solar aspects. On northerly aspects, hand pits revealed a thin, brittle melt-form crust under the new snow that was likely a bit of freezing fog, light drizzle, or wet snow to start the recent period of snowfall. 

On the ridge, we were able to kick a couple of small pieces of cornice with no impact on the slopes below. 

Wind effect appeared most pronounced on steep, upper elevation, south and southwesterly slopes, but that's mostly because these were the only locations where we observed any recent soft slab activity. Elsewhere, the new snow was loose and dry but was not readily sluffing. Evidence of some mid-storm sluffs and soft slabs was apparent in several of the Rae Wallace chutes. 

Overall, very few recent naturals were observed, and none appeared to break any deeper than the new/old snow interface. While this recent storm offered visible improvement to coverage and conditions, it wasn't enough weight to stress or overload deeper buried weak layers.