Observation: West Willow

Travel today was up Willow Heights with a look into West Monitor, over to the sub-ridge between W and S monitor for a run on the N facing then back out to the S facing run in the Hourglass, then on to Wills Hill W facing with a exit out Willow. Had a good view of a lot of terrain and did not see any sighs of natural avalanche activity, only cornice drops and sluffing in the steeper terrain. Dropped a decent sized cornice into the center punch of West Monitor with no results, same deal in South Monitor. Dug a quick pit on the hike out of the N facing run on the sub ridge between the two Monitors at about 9500ft NE facing, did get a fairly easy shear, on the light density snow below yesterdays denser snow but it wasn't very clean, and in that pit the light density snow from our last storm had been compacted down to about 4 inches of two finger snow, I would think this weakness will heal rapidly with continued settlement. I was kind of surprised that we could not get any collapsing of the dense snow on the lighter density but I think the settlement of the light density along with it being compacted by yesterdays dense wind driven snow has made it a more cohesive and solid layer.

Photos: cornice drop in West Monitor, Snow pit, and the not so clean shear on the buried lighter density snow.

Thinking with continued settlement things will stabilize quickly especially if we get a clear cold night with minimal wind.

There was about 14 inches of new snow, the first 6 or 7 inches was dense which was capped off with 5 or 6 inches of light density snow, with a little wind crust on the ridge line.