Central Sawtooths

There was a small surficial shed cycle in today's sun. I observed many small (R1 D1) sluffs in steep terrain. These were mainly dry loose and moist loose, with a few attaining a wetter character in the early afternoon. In the most favorable terrain (long, very steep, rocky) a few of these became size D1.5 (still R1). I did not see any D2s. Sluffs were arresting high in the runout when they ran onto slopes that were less than ~30 degrees. By 1500 S aspects at upper elevations were refreezing thanks to cool temps, occasional cloud cover, and westerly winds. It will take warmer temperatures, calm winds, and full sun to really get a widespread wet loose problem firing here, and the onset will be slow thanks to the thick crusts formed today. I directly encountered many wind slabs that had formed during the previous day's storms. These were largely unreactive, but their presence was the main driver of my terrain selection...I wasn't a huge fan of them in very steep, high consequence terrain. Very large dunes and drifts were widespread in the terrain, extending down into middle elevations in many locations. Their presence wasn't immediately obvious in places, thanks to the fluffy new snow on top. Cornices have grown quite large here, thanks to the impressive amount of snow that fell in the first weeks of February. I probed for 1/31, and it felt like I was finding it around 120-140cm down, but its presence wasn't easy to detect with the probe. Burly glopping and trail-breaking today with the cold temps, moist surfaces, and abundance of cold dry snow around! I moved through a lot of untraveled terrain and experienced two small, muffled collapses involving more recent wind drifts. No associated cracking with these.

Central Sawtooths

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Avalanche