Some years ago I was skinning up Mill D with a Wise Old Avalanche Dog (who's prone to referencing Biblical verses and French philosophers in his forecasts) and he asked me "do you think that can slide?"as we walked past the Weathering Heights shot. It provided some good conversation fodder for a while, and over time I think we kinda agreed that it couldn't/wouldn't. But today, I proved that it can, that is, sort of, at least at a very minor level.

Like many folks, we sniveled into Mill D today to get some nice powder in non-avy terrain, and skinned up to ski the Weathering Heights shot. On top - where the overnight winds that accompanied the new snow were abating, but still blowing a bit - we had a remote trigger of a bunch of cracking on the low angle terrain below the small cornice, then purposely got lots of additional cracking with kicking at the cornice (it's so low angle up there that there's no chance of it running). We skied one run, and at the bottom as we were skinning we saw a skier come swooping into the bottom of the run across the way (Powder Park?) and as he went by the slope "avalanched" as it rolled the last 5 vertical feet into the creek bottom. ie it had all the elements of an avalanche: crown, adjacent cracks, etc - but it literally only went 5 vertical feet. But enough to realize that the 'pack is unstable, even down in the bottom of the drainage where there's no wind effect.

On our second run I was rolling down a slightly-less-weedy slope that was closing out in more weeds and as I cut over to the adjacent rib that was more open I suddenly realized that I was skiing into the moving debris of another micro avalanche that I remotely triggered as I closed in. It was basically the roll off of a sub-ridge, one of the couple of steep spots in the entire area. This one was many times bigger than the one in the drainage; it ran maybe 20 vertical feet. So honestly, no big deal; the overall slope angle was low, there was virtually no debris pile where the "avalanche" pretty much spread onto a very low-angle slope below, etc. But it was a sobering example of the instabilities that exist at the moment.

Digging a bit I found I couldn't isolate a column before it pulled out, and it seemed to me that there were two places: one at the new snow/old snow interface, and another a mid-storm instability a coupla/few inches up from the old base (which together effectively made it a surprisingly thick overall weak interface).

It was great to ski blower powder (esp since we missed the well-documented first storm cycle earlier this month) but overall it was a bit slow due perhaps in part to the cold snow but mostly because we weren't willing to ski anything with any pitch (aside from my little sub-ridge roll, that honestly I was oblivious to). I hope that weak interface gets buried/crushed and it eventually will, but at the moment I think that it will be a bit Persistent for a while, and the excitement will likely increase with the anticipated snow later this week. 'Tis the season, I suppose.

We didn't ski anything south facing today; a bit too thin yet, though I was guessing that the more filled in south facing terrain in LCC that I skied over the weekend would behave much differently with the denture-rattling base underneath.