Observation: Little Water

The weak faceted pre-December 9th layer along this part of Millcreek/BCC has had many connected slab results over last weekend, some natural but most remote skier-triggers along the ridge.

The long propagation along the West Deso ridge and the 2 different 1000'+ pieces along Sheep Sh*t Ridge show pronounced the November faceting and the less-disrupted terrain allows these collapses and slides to connect.

This HS 100cm pit ~9350' NW-facing off Little Water Peak showed faceted layers on both sides of a deteriorating Nov. M/F crust with a solid slab on top. Sudden Planar ECT failure on the uppermost facets (pic 2 saw marking), same as all slides from the last 4 days.

What's looking up:

-Many large slopes have collapsed and/or avalanched and may have the ability to heal with Thursday's storm if facets were removed enough.

What's not:

-Many avalanche paths didn't run or fully propagate and in large slope sections still remain in tact. With this week's storm we may see some full-blown dragons wake up once that Dec. 9 facet interface reaches critical mass. Worse is any NW-E slopes that support this next water weight will be large, destructive slabs when people find trigger points.

-Some slopes that have avalanched have left hard, planar bed surfaces with developed facets in tact on top. Repeater potential is there.

Solar aspects dampening with sun, freezing a zipper crust at night.  Down in drainages surface hoar is present from inversions.