Observation: Willows

Alongside AII instructor Emily Drinkwater. Josh, Gerry Hall, Paul Krekow, Erik Snyder, Jeff Wheatley, and I Santiago Vega headed up the Willow heights trail to Blue Bunny ridge. Along the way we did not experienced the cracking or collapsing we were expecting to find, the only red flags we encountered were point release (dry loose) avalanches triggered by Solitude ski patrol with ski cuts across the road. Along the Ridge, before the final Willow knob climb, we stepped off the ridge to dig Study pits on the north side. The group split into 4 groups to dig Snow pits within 200 feet from each other. We encountered highly variable results both in the structure of the snowpack as well as in the test results. Some groups encountered a relatively stable snowpack with faceted crystals and some rounding and some even encountered a thick translucent ice layer. Results varied from No propagation on Extended column tests to Full propagation on ECT11. Most failures happened on the facet layer 45cm from the ground. Compression tests presented Quality 2 shears. The new Snow appears to have bonded well to the old surface at our location. While we didn't encountered any significant avalanche activity or obvious red flags the snowpack is very weak and it will need time to heal. After talking to other AAI Pro 1 groups we heard very different experiences to ours. I highly suggest reading their observations.

On their drive back home to Alta, one member of our group captured the photo below. A seemingly natural slide in snowbird in the keyhole area that went down to the ground.