Bald Mountain Ridge

Today was another recon and snowmachine familiarization tour. Feeling a little more confident in our abilities, we explored the upper reaches of the Willow drainage and the west side of Hatcher Pass. We found mostly soft, supportable snow with some light faceting and recrystallized snow helping improve surface conditions. Although we encountered no red flags, we observed a more recent avalanche at about 4200' on a N facing knoll near Bald Mountain Ridge. This slide appeared to be remotely triggered by a party sometime in the previous few days. Otherwise, we observed a lot of slopes that had avalanched during the 1/23-27 cycle, and a lot of snowmachine, ski tracks, and high marking on numerous aspects with no signs of instability.   We dug one pit on a SE facing slope in the Upper Willow Road area and encountered no instabilities. Cold clear weather is doing its part to help loosen the surface and improve riding conditions. Today was a great verification of our most recent forecast with generally safe conditions observed with a bullseye reminder that although unlikely, in steep isolated terrain it could still be possible to trigger deeper instabilities in the snowpack. 

We dug a hasty pit on a SE aspect at 3500 ft. The top 300 cm was 1F to P hard, and we didn't dig deep enough to find the weak layer, hence the unlikely nature of triggering an avalanche.