Initially skiied Toledo Bowl - south facing and 'moderately' steep before the sun and temps hammered it. South holds little to no weak snow and we'd be dealing with new snow instabilities only. On our hike up Flagstaff after, we observed a skier triggered slide in the Toledo Chutes.

After gaining the Cottonwood ridge line, I had Paul belay me into the starting zone of Two Dogs - something that Kobernik and I had remotely avalanched out last Friday (1/20/12) - part of the remote 1/2 mile wide avalanche after the 1st storm. I went in to look into the potential for repeaters - how stable the storm snow was above the remaining depth hoar that the 1/20 slide hadn't cleaned out.

An ECT yielded nothing (twice) after 30 taps. then followed up with what our long-departed observer-now-forecaster in the Chugach Wendy Wagner calls the AK heel drop test. Three heel drops on the shovel blade yielded full propagation along the depth hoar layer. (Why stop at 30 when you have a deep slab issue?)

We continued east along the ridge and dropped an good size cornice and the deep slab released. See video below.

We used a cornice cord - maybe 50' of p-cord with knots to release the cornice. The subsequent deep slab release seemed consistent with the previous ECT results mentioned above. Difficult to trigger, deadly if caught. This was all the info we needed and didn't need to drop any more. Otherwise it would be just a sport. Let them sit and gain more snow and strength over time...We'll see.

Slide was a repeater - no 12/31 dirt slab noted...and slab was roughly 3' deep (the snow since last Saturday afternoon) - remaining level of facets are up to a foot deep.

Photo below of the weak snow columns poking up off the inverted slab -