Window (mountain) To Our Bowls

Today, the team went for a sled day out in Window Mountain Bowl. The last time we were in this area, we observed a widespread natural avalanche cycle with large, destructive avalanches (up to a size 3.5) running full path length in all of the bowls. At the time, the avalanche danger was rated high, so we were not able to get a good look at the type of avalanches or the failure plane. Today's goal was to get a better look at the snowpack and see if there were definitive clues as to why the avalanches were so large. After digging a snow pit to ground, and doing a few different snow pack tests, our only results were spotty surface instabilities in areas where the surface hoar from last week's high pressure system might still be preserved (not blown away by the wind or melted out from warming). At 1950 m we found a thick, bridging crust down 80 cm into the snowpack that caps any instabilities in the lower snowpack. We did not observe any new avalanches, although we noticed a good amount of wind-loading in lee features in the alpine. At 1:30 pm, the wind was blowing lightly from the SW (and moderate at ridgetop). The temperature was -7.2 and the snow depth where we dug our pit was 155 cm. The sun even poked out for a bit of the day and was well received by all. Overall, it was a fantastic day - made better by the fresh grooming pass from the CrowSnow team. Thanks guys!