North Twin

Quick report

We skinned into a ravine/drainage on the north side of North Twin mountain, which contains two slides. On the trip in, we didn't experience any snowpack cracking or collapsing. Weather was sunny, cool, with higher winds blowing some snow off trees in higher terrain. We dug a pit at 3380' at the bottom low angle area of a north facing slide, with the pit facing slightly northeast and towards the side of the slide. Total snow depth was 70-90cm (depending on side of the pit) down to water ice. On the 70cm side, 70-45cm was fist, ice/crust layer at 45cm, 45-20cm fist, 20cm to ground water ice was faceted snow with the lowest 10cm being very loose. We did an ECT, tapping on the side with 70cm depth. We got ECTN14 at the 45cm ice/crust layer. On the 16th hit, the full column collapsed on the faceted snow at the ground water ice. Although concerned about the faceted snow at the base of the snowpack in the pit in the north facing slide, we did cautiously ascend and ski the bottom narrow section of the more northwest facing slide, which seemed to hold better snow. Our reasoning was that we hadn't experienced any red flags, this section is not consistently 30 degrees or more, and the upper wide part of this slide was stripped down to water ice and wind hammered snow. The ski was short with pretty good turns and our impression was that the snow was stable in this section.