Silver Peak

Warm temperatures and mostly sunny skies made it feel like spring today. When we started our tour, we found some frozen snow surfaces below 6700 ft where cold air had collected in the valley overnight. As soon as we got above the inversion, we either found wet snow that likely did not refreeze overnight or a thin, weak refreeze on top of wet snow. The thin refreeze was more widespread on the shady northerly aspects, and the sunny slopes held more wet snow. We ski cut test slopes on NE-E-SE and could easily trigger small sluffs of loose wet snow. Our ski cuts also produced rollerballs and pinwheels. The wet snow never got deeper than ankle height in most places, but this would be enough for loose, wet avalanches on long, steep slopes. On our way out, the frozen snow we saw in the morning had warmed up, and wet snow also existed in those lower elevation areas. 

Ski cuts on steep slopes triggered shallow, small sluffs of loose wet snow that could qualify as D1 or D.5 loose wet avalanches.