WMR Sidecountry - Ghoulies etc.

We toured out into the WMR sidecountry to assess conditions after a few reported small avalanches over the past few days in the zone. In general, we were very pleased with what we found. Test slopes, uptrack tests, and hand pits were all unreactive, even when conducted in steep terrain. There has been a bit of soft slab formation over the past few days on lee slopes, but a full day without additional inputs seems to have done the snowpack well in this location. A dense layer which formed during the warmup Thursday night into Friday seems to be the sliding surface for the recent activity. It is ski supportable and providing a nice bottom for some quality sliding conditions in the new snow above.

Of note, most of the terrain in the zone where we traveled benefits from a treed ridge that helps to limit significant wind transport. With the recent high winds, soft slabs were able to form, but we didn't find any hard slabs. We presume that had we gone onto a large open slope in the lee of a windward open slope, deeper and harder slabs would have been present.

Avalanche likely occurred Friday night or Saturday during the day. Crown was partially refilled.

In moderately wind-loaded terrain, we found a 25-30 cm soft surface slab (F/4F/4F+) resting on a 5 cm thick, dense 1F layer from the warmup Thursday PM/Friday early AM.  In areas free from wind effect, this recent snow since the warmup was 10-15 cm thick. About 10 cm of 4F snow below the dense layer, resting on the very stout AR crust.

45-50 cm total over the AR crust in wind-loaded terrain

30 cm over the AR crust in sheltered terrain.

HS in a sheltered location at 6000' - 140 cm

Ski penetration is to the dense layer.