McDonald Peak

The higher you climb in terrain, the higher the chance you have of triggering an avalanche. These are most likely to occur near ridgelines, drifts, or on the sides of wind-loaded features such as gullies. Cracking, collapsing, and hollow drum-like sounding snow are all signs of instability. 

Signs of instability increased as we climbed in elevation, even with high temperatures. Due to temperatures quickly rising from below to above freezing, snow was moist starting out from the truck at the road. As we climbed through lower elevations, the mix of moist snow in the sun and drier snow in the shade made for gloppy travel, even with skin wax — it might not be April yet, but it felt like it. Conducting two different ECT tests at 8300' on a NE aspect, we got propagation with moderate and light force on the recent new/old snow interface (11/30), 30cm down into a 45cm snowpack. At the upper end of our middle elevation band, we started to notice cracks propogating through the snowpack at 8800' on E aspects. Near 8900' on similar aspects we began to experience collapsing that radiated an estimated 40-50' in diameter from us. From ridgeline, we could see 3 D1-D2 avalanches that ran since Sunday on aspects ranging from NE-E-SE.