East side sled loop

Today we left the skis at home and did a big sled loop through the Big Y and out to the north east end of White Pass. We saw a lot of terrain and observed to new avalanches or signs of instability.We did observe a large cornice failure but that was probably from a couple of weeks ago. The cornice chunk was huge and travelled a large distance into the valley below. Snow quality is still pretty good in the upper alpine on north aspects and even south aspects at lower elevations where the wind did not get to last weekend. In the smaller valleys out to the north east, the Jan 30th avalanche cycle was very impressive and almost all large slopes avalanched to ground. In these areas to the north east, we have not received as much new snow as the west side of White Pass and a lot of old debris and hard bed surfaces are still impacting riding quality. Also, on these more north eastern zones, there is not a well developed slab on top of the Jan 30 crust or the Feb 9 surface hoar layers so our concern for new avalanches was low.