I ski Mill Creek Canyon a fair bit but hadn't since The Big Snows of earlier in the week and the Big Slides of last weekend in Porter Fork. So went up there to check it out.

We stayed on windward, sheltered, low angle terrain, so I don't know how either the slopes like Main Gobblers (that I don't think avalanched in the recent cycle) nor the big lines in PoFo (that did avalanche, and are now reloaded) did, so it's hard to say how stubborn or reactive they are. However, knowing that MCC is one of the peripheral zones of the upper Cottonwoods that has less overall snowpack than those fatties for once I went ahead and dug a deep hole to see what was going on.

The recent snow skied and felt right side up, with ski penetrations about a foot or so. Below that it's mostly a uniform slab almost all the way to the ground, where there's a foot-deep facet/crust/facet sandwich; the bottom is actually somewhat wet (could make a snowball) but the crust above seems to be insulating the facets above that and those are very much sugar snow. So indeed, still a PWL at the base of the 'pack, with about 3.5 feet (at 8300 feet) resting on top of that (likely more snow at the higher elevations). Could a skier trigger that on a steep slope? I think it's approaching the point where a skier wouldn't, but not yet willing to bet my life on it, and with the aforementioned storm snow that came in that could avalanche itself and be the Big Trigger I think more time/more snow will help this situation.

It's pretty difficult to make the call on what is the single-word avalanche danger to describe this snowpack when you aren't willing to be the Body Bomb yourself and it seems most of our peers are rightly not really willing to either (yet). With a couple of days of mellow weather naturals are highly unlikely, and I think that with some time of adjustment to the new load the likelihood of a skier triggering a slide is decreasing. But....that's a big But.....