Incline Lake Peak

When we pulled into the parking lot, we could see roller ball activity from yesterday below the rocks on Incline Lake Peak. Today's warm, sunny weather melted through last night's refreeze by 10-11 am this morning. Only a few patches of terrain on very shady, steep, due north aspects seemed to escape some of the warming. On all other aspects, we found wet snow at all elevations. Whenever we rolled a snowball down a steep sunny slope, it would gather snow and become a large pinwheel (3-4 ft in diameter). If we ski cut across the top of a steep sunny test slope, we triggered sluffs of loose wet snow. We chose to stick to lower angle terrain and avoid the steep sunny slopes. When we returned to the parking lot, we looked back at the SE face of Incline Lake Peak. Not only did we see more roller balls than we had seen in the morning, but we also saw a D1 wet loose avalanche flowing down the face.

We saw a D1 wet loose avalanche in motion on the SE face of Incline Lake Peak at noon. We also saw a skier-triggered D1 wet loose avalanche on the E face of the Fireplug while driving by at 12:30 pm. Ski cuts on NE-E-SE facing slopes triggered wet loose sluffs between 9:30 am and noon during our tour. Numerous pinwheels and roller balls also occured on these aspects.