Mt. Axtell

We found evidence of more dangerous conditions as we climbed into more wind-drifted terrain near treeline, where there were a couple of large naturals from yesterday.  We attempted to remote trigger and stomp at suspect features from the safety of the ridgeline and got limited feedback, except for triggering one large avalanche of new and drifted snow in the Quill.   Despite poor snowpack structure and propagating test results on deeper weak layers here, none of the large wind slabs in Pencil, Quill, WangChung, or 4th  Bowl stepped down and triggered anything deeper.  Below treeline slopes were quiet in stability tests and ski cuts.  

A couple of small collapses on wind drifted features along ridgeline. Triggered one slab.

The 3/3 interface buried at the start of this week's storms is small grained facets (~.5 to 1 mm) on northerly aspects, capped by a thin crust on NE to ENE aspects, and a thicker crust on due E.  The ingredients for an avalanche seemed to require adequate slab formation at higher elevations from more snow and wind drifting, and slabs appeared to be less reactive where they formed over thicker crusts.  Wind-sheltered terrain below treeline produced non-propagating pit results and no signs of instability while targeting steep features, likely because the lack of well-developed slab.  We did see one natural storm slab in sheltered terrain that ran during the storm. 

We also targeted a repeat offender slope to assess deep weak layers and got hard, propagating results on the Feb 8th facet layer down 110 cm, with larger depth hoar grains still lingering near the ground.  See profile.