Lake Valhalla

Traveled from Yodelin lot under the west side of Lichtenberg to Lake Valhalla and onto polar slopes west of the lake today. There was a fairly prominent rain crust present at the surface until about 4.3k on our ascent. New snow (15-20cm, elevation dependent) on solar slopes was already warming up by 0930 with small point release avalanches leading to some wet loose activity. Westerly slopes above Lake Valhalla demonstrated old debris likely from earlier this week as well as what appeared to be natural storm/wind slab avalanches in some steeper wind affected terrain, likely triggered from point releases on steep rockier terrain above. Notably, a prominent gully above the lake produced a natural D2 avalanche sometime between 1030 and 1330. We found dry albeit fairly dense unconsolidated snow on polar slopes west of Lake Valhalla. Wind effect on tree protected ridgelines was nonexistent. A quick profile down to the Solstice Crust (5350', N aspect, non wind affected slope) identified an interface at the new/old snow interface that produced a CTE RP result. There was no reactivity on the solstice crust in column tests. We did not conduct an ECT. We skied polar slopes up to 30-35 degrees without incident. Notably, there was minimal dry loose activity. On our descent from the lake at approximately 1400, the previously identified rain crust had broken down on solar slopes and only remained present in the drainage bottom. Due southerlies on steep terrain produced ski width wet loose avalanches that were slow to get going and failed to reach runout zones.

Quick report