Boot Spur

Snow surfaces were variable in Hillman's Highway. There was variable size to the distribution of new wind slabs, but a slight variation in hardness (likely from a change in wind speed) was consistently around 6 inches and was the interface where we found consistently stubborn results in numerous hand shears. 

Previous bootpacks from both days earlier and this morning had filled in with new snow and were only slightly visible in a few places. Much of the snow was rounded and smooth, in some places scoured and firm, and others highly wind affected and textured. Our high point was approximately 4400 ft near the dry loose debris sheltered underneath a rock. In the snow we observed we felt it lacked the potential to propagate because outside of active wind loading, we did not see shooting cracks.

While we did not go into Tuckerman Ravine, we did visually observe it from Hermit Lake. The crownline that has been visible across Center Headwall for multiple days is gone, which indicates that it has reloaded and filled.

Substantial sluffing was accumulating of dry and unconsolidated snow. These natural dry loose sluffs were very small in size. Loading throughout the day caused enough loose and dry snow to accumulate and essentially shed down step sections of Hillman's. While we observed dry loose avalanches, by size they do not fit the criteria to be listed as an avalanche problem. We saw evidence of this activity in Duchess and Empress, but this is commonly seen in this terrain. Probing depths of the toe of the debris was variable, but was most consistently 1.5-3 ft in depth. The toe of debris was about 4400 ft and due to the slight choke of the location we could not make out the full path size.