Tuckerman Ravine Trail above Hermit Lake

Interested to see how ramping and shifting winds had affected the recent snow from the last two days, we went up toward the floor of Tuckerman Ravine looking for any evidence of natural avalanche activity from last night or this morning. In the interest of staying out of the runout of any paths, we skinned the Tuckerman Ravine Trail 2/3 of the way to the floor of the ravine before veering right towards Lobster Claw and into the boulder field to find a safer viewing location. We skinned through soft snow, knee-deep drifts, and found very few supportable wind hardened suraces to travel on.  We wound firm over softer structure in most places and got numerous propagating cracks shooting out from under our skis. Several slabs cracked and collapsed with audible whumphing. 

Despite flat light and poor visibility, a small, partially filled-in crown line was visible in the lower third of Chute. This seemed to be the only new evidence of avalanche activity since yesterday's observations. Debris from a slide in Hillmans yesterday already appeared to be scoured over. Although we expected to see more natural activity, the structure and reactivity of the snowpack existed to make a human-triggered avalanche likely. 

Although we did not dig down to the old snow surface, hand pits revealed hard over soft structure in wind-affected new snow. The red flags observed let us know the snowpack was reactive and highly sensitive to the weight of a skier. One shooting crack with accompanying whumphing was 30ft long and 2.5 ft deep.