In our travels today we witnessed a number of both natural and human triggered avalanches that had occurred within the last 24 hours. Warm temps accelerated new snow settlement adding body to the pack but also adding to the "upside down" nature. New snow depths are impressive on the south end of the range, with settled totals around 24" . ECT's in wind protected areas showed full propagation all in the ECTP10 range. Interestingly test pits were propagating on weak buried surface snow from before the Christmas storm wile all observed avalanches failed in October facets near the ground. My guess is the additional wind load in the start zones added more strength to the slab and more stress to the weak layer. Today checked the boxes of EVERY red flag.

On our way out this afternoon we avoided a suspect slide path by dropping below the runout zone and climbing a lower angle rib adjacent to the path. The second rider up got stuck and remotely triggered the path we were avoiding as well as another path roughly 300 yards farther down the ridge. Luckily we stuck to the lower angle terrain with nothing steep above us or it would have been a very close call.

The most significant thing we saw today was a natural on the ENE side of bald knoll. This occurred as the pre frontal winds ramped up so I'm guessing cornice fall is the likely trigger. Flat light and low tide made getting close impossible but from a distance it looks like this also failed on in the early season facets near the ground.