Quick report
Skied Hidden Peak this afternoon, with some very conservative route selection. It was snowing the entire afternoon, but never greater than S1, and mostly S-1. No rain fell during our tour, but it was above freezing at the car, and the snow from about 7600’ down was very moist. New snow amounts were a trace down low, and up to an inch up high. Winds were relatively light, until above around 8200’, when they picked up into the moderate range, and were transporting snow. We didn’t find any wind deposits of significant depth however. We did find the debris from an old, large avalanche, which was probably one of the remotely triggered ones from the observation on Valentine’s Day. It seems to have come off an ENE facing slope at around 8400’, on the side of Peak 9268, but low visibility made it tough to pinpoint. Up high, there was a firm surface right beneath the new accumulations, which kept ski penetration less than 5 cm. We stopped to dig on a NE slope at 8350’. HS was 220 cm, with the top 90 cm being the recent storm snow. This had consolidated into a 1F to 1F+ slab, resting atop the crust-facet-crust problematic layer. We performed two CTs, and both were CTN, and also got an ECTX. We tried to do a PST, but our weak layer was interrupted by some vertical ice formations coming out of the upper crust, which almost appeared to be percolation channels. Our descent was enjoyable, if variable, and we stuck to the lowest angle terrain options for the entire time.