Silvern Lakes Gold

Today we rode up to Silvern Lakes and did a little exploring. The big slide path on the approach has avalanched. We suspect this occurred approximately a week ago during the storm event that ended with intense wind transport from the NE loading this SW facing path. The winds today were gusting to extreme from the SW on the ridge tops and still strong well into the tree line. Significant wind loading is occurring on many aspects well down into the trees. The visibility was poor but we observed one recent wind slab avalanche, 24-48 hours old. We dug a profile on a west facing slope at 1475 m. We found the Jan 26 facets over a melt freeze crust down ~ 40 cm. This layer failed in a moderate compression test with sudden collapse properties. We minimized our overhead exposure and found good riding in sheltered trees. We believe there are wind slab avalanches occurring and many wind loaded slopes are primed for human triggering.