New Snow

Decreasing Danger

Went to Mt. Baldy to evaluate the weakness resulting in three slides on tuesday 10/29 on Baldy Shoulder. I performed a crude ECT in a location roughly 200' above the two more prominent slides on a 30 degree, NE facing slope at ~10,500'(see red arrow in attached photo), scoring an exciting ECTP-2, with failure on 2mm facets buried 10/28 by a layer of prefrontal dirt and graupel. Upon walking back to the ridge, I felt a convincing collapse while stepping on an obvious wind pillow. Strong winds last night have reshaped much of the upper elevation snow surface, and in this location, I found a total HS of 70cm, with our old snow surface sitting beneath 40cm of recent storm snow, obviously enhanced by the wind and forming a 4f/1f slab. Further up Mt. Baldy, on the spooky, hanging open slope of the High Baldy Shoulder, and in the Main Chute, there appears to significantly more snow than there was yesterday, due to last night's wind. Nearly everything with enough snow to ski at (closed) Alta Ski Area has been well-tracked, but people have stayed away from runs off the top of Baldy, though its evident a few have gone all the way up for a look. I would imagine that if anywhere is holding reactive old snow, it is those locations, where recent wind slabs offer a tempting appearance of coverage, and perhaps enough additional load to get things going.