Sunburst

We toured up Sunburst with the intention of checking out the recently reported avalanches in the area and to see how the buried weak layers have adapted to the new snow. Our initial plan was to get a close look at the crown of the avalanche that caught and carried a skier yesterday, but after looking at the avalanche from the valley below, we decided there was too much overhead exposure to be poking around at the crown. So instead, we looked at the crown of a different avalanche that was safer to access. This was a small remote triggered avalanche at around 2200' on a West aspect. We confirmed that avalanche failed on a very weak layer of facets buried about a foot deep. We suspect the conditions were similar at the avalanche  that we had initially tried to access.

Once we gained the ridge the snow was more wind affected but it appeared isolated to right at ridgeline. We skied down a SW facing slope from 3300' and found soft snow throughout.  There was about 10" (25 cm) recent snow that skied well. The remains of old glide avalanches are still present and were somewhat hard to spot with the new snow. 

While touring up Sunburst we stopped to check out a recent (12/31) remotely triggered avalanche on a west aspect. We took a close look at the crown and confirmed the avalanche failed on a very weak layer of 2-3 mm facets, which was sandwiched between two thin crusts. We got a non-propagating test result (ECTN11) on a facet layer 30 cm down. We believe this avalanche was triggered remotely from about 50-75 feet away. This is likely a similar setup to the avalanche that caught and carried a skier further up the ridge yesterday.