Hope Creek

We had an incredible day with great visibility exploring the Rockies north of Golden, significantly more snow in this location than what we found in Hospital Creek yesterday. We saw a widespread recent natural avalanche cycle to size 2.5 with the bulk of the activity being size 2.  Most of the activity was made up of loose dry avalanches to size 1.5 that were stopping in the middle of the runouts. (See Photo 1) The larger avalanches were failing as slabs that released in steep features near rock outcroppings. (Photo 2) The increasingly strong February sun managed to initiate a bit of activity to size 2 on south facing slopes after lunch. (Photo 3) There were larger avalanches in the alpine, but these were likely a week or even two old. We dug a profile in a start zone of a northeast facing avalanche path at treeline and were able to identify the mid-January and late-January surface hoar layers down 60 to 70 cm.  See photo 4 that also features my mug. ;)  They produced sudden results with hard compressions in when tested and in our minds, they remain untrustworthy.  Total height of snow at this location was about 2 meters.