Our avalanche class had 5 groups that covered most of the periphery terrain of Brighton--Pioneer Ridge, Catherine's Pass, Twin Lakes Pass, Great Western to 10,420, Snake Creek-Caribou Basin. Everyone dug lots of snowpits but few reported anything too alarming in any of the pits. Yes, there is a poor snowpack structure with a thick layer of depth hoar in the basement and a pretty good, recent load on top, but the results were quite under whelming considering the recent weather. One group got a number of compression tests with easy elbow taps in the lower Twin Lakes Pass area but they were barely propagating or not propagating on the Extended Column tests. Most groups reported hard results on compression tests and no propagation on ECT tests. I suspect this may be due to lots of tracks in the pre-existing faceted snow over the past weeks. Untracked slopes will likely react much differently.
One group reported a collapse along the Clayton - Snake Creek ridge. The slab seemed stubborn, dense and warm. Several out-of-bounds riders dove into some fairly gnarly terrain off Pioneer and Dog Lake without triggering anything. I have a feeling that the worst areas are places with recent wind loading from the strong west and northwest wind combined with a thin, seldom-tracked previous snowpack.
The expected extra load tonight should be interesting whether it pushes the snowpack into a more widespread and active cycle. Tomorrow's danger rating will depend mostly on the amount of load tonight and on Sunday and the amount of wind loading. Probably Level 3 if the new snow fails to materialize to Level 4 again with 1-2 inches of additional water combined with wind.
