Lynx Creek

We saw the aftermath of a very active avalanche cycle in Lynx Creek, with some avalanches buried by up to a foot of new snow and others looking like they had released within the past few days. These were on all aspects, mostly at elevations above 2000'. Some were up to 1000' wide. We got a close look at the crown of one of these, which clearly failed on the 2/14 buried surface hoar layer.

There was about a foot of soft snow on the surface, which got progressively stiffer with depth. The weak layer seems to be stubborn, but was propagating with a lot of energy once we got it to fail in our stability tests.

We dug one pit at the crown of an avalanche on a northwest aspect at about 2800', and another on an east aspect at 2900'. We found the 2/14 buried surface hoar in both pits, 2-2.5' deep. The layer took extra force to fail in stability tests, but failed with a lot of energy with a few extra bonus taps at the end of our tests. It seems like the likelihood of triggering an avalanche is decreasing, but the size of some of the avalanches we saw was impressive. This is enough to keep us away from steep terrain for now.