Eldorado Bench

Challenging trail breaking and an interest in investigating more northerly aspects encouraged a quick climb up to the relatively accessible Eldorado Bowl. While we acknowledged it was unlikely we'd climb much higher than the bench, even this steep slope gave us pause and encouraged cautious assessment. On the walk across the flats we triggered a couple small, but deep collapses in the new snow, adding to the consideration of what we might find above. We made about 50 kick turns, attempting to stick to a small subridge of the bench, and shortly, but frustratingly, made it to the top. Collapses stopped being observed soon after our skin track started to gain pitch. Once we got to the bowl, we observed a few more recent natural soft slabs that likely released Tuesday during the storm's height of instability. 

On our ascent, we encountered about 20 inches of recent, unconsolidated snow. Hand pits revealed a thin 2-3'' layer of well-developed facets in flat areas, with even less on the slope as we ascended. We dug a couple pits on a northerly aspects at about 3900'. On a NE aspect, we found an HS of about 24'' with the majority of the snowpack consisting of recent storm snow from earlier this week. Here, only the bottom five inches of the snowpack consisted of old snow, comprised of a 2-inch layer of well-developed, chained depth hoar sitting on a 3-inch, firm, knife-hard slab. Stability tests here yielded no results.