Duncan to Hyndman

This was an off-duty ski tour. Mostly moving through terrain and making informal observations. Intention was to go back into core complex to look for natural activity and ski one of these features, ended up with one and a half. 

I experienced isolated cracking and collapsing on wind-loaded features at mid to upper elevations. This was confined to the upper end of middle to the lower end of upper elevation terrain.

Leaving the truck around 11:00, the walk up Hyndman Creek to the turn off for the core complex was still firm and delivered a nice crunch from broken MFcr with each step despite being in the sun the whole time I was ascending. While not formally measured, temperatures had me skinning the 6 or so miles to the turnoff in my mid-layer — a sign things are notably chilly for me. Climbing high into the core basin, there was a thin MFcr on all solar terrain, and textured wind deposits in many small undulations in tx — anywhere the wind could find a good home for fresh snow over the past couple of days. These wind deposits provided some isolated cracked and collapsing at the upper end of middle and the lower end of upper terrain.

While in the alpine near the base of Hyndman, there were many textured wind deposits and firm, sculpted drifts that I avoided travel through. These all appeared firm, and if triggered on convexities / rollovers would have produced hard slab wind slab avalanches similar to the one that I intentionally triggered on a rollover heading up to the ascent ridge on Hyndman. The SW ridge was wind-scoured, with plenty of rocks showing compared to the last I was up there just 2 or so weeks ago.

Overall, the high pressure, high-temperature shift towards spring had not yet hit the Pioneers on this day — making sense with forecasted temps & winds. Given the good amount of snow that lives in confined features, and the newly developed wind slabs, it would be hard to imagine meltwater not producing some larger natural avalanches running as the meltdown begins over the weekend. With plenty of cornice development, and the 2 cornice-initiated slides that had already run, these will be concerns for failing and triggering larger avalanches with rising temperatures.