Burgundy Mtn.

We saw numerous natural wet loose avalanches and extensive roller balls on all aspects at upper and middle elevations. All loose wet avalanches were all D1.5 or smaller in size, but ran a far (up to 500 feet) before stopping as slope angles mellowed out. Many were from yesterday, but some happened today. Most excitingly, we saw one natural wet slab avalanche which occurred between 13:00 and 15:30 while we were out digging. We think we heard it, but unfortunately, we were not in the right place at the right time to watch it happen. We ski cut a few wet loose avalanches on slopes about 35 degrees in angle.

It was hot all day, with temperatures around 50 degrees when we left the parking lot, and almost 70 when we returned! It was mostly cloudy, but there was a brief period of sun in the early afternoon, which is when we most of today's natural avalanches occurred.

With saturated snow and poor ski quality we had no desire to ski off-piste, and returned to Snowbowl to ski a groomer down.

The upper snowpack contained large, wet to saturated meltforms. The depth of wet snow varied by elevation and aspect, but was between 10 and 20 cm (4-8 inches). Below this the snow was moist. It was difficult to determine if the snowpack became dry at any depth because snow exposed to the air immediately felt moist. Water was pooling on several interfaces around 65 cm (2 feet) deep. It was difficult to tell exactly, but these layers appeared to be the old/new interface from last week's storm, and a crust formed in early March. I did not see significant water pooling on deeper layers where I dug (NE aspect, 7900 feet).