Observation: Days Fork

New Snow

Decreasing Danger

The main concern out there today was now snow instability. This was especially pronounced at peak precip rates. I stared my tour up flagstaff (10am). I diligently stuck to the ridge on the way up to avoid traveling on to the open slope to the east that the skinner often crosses. As I got to the top of false Flagstaff (11am). I hair triggered, from the ridge, a new snow avalanche on the days fork headwall that propagated about 100ft wide and ran until the slope mellowed out to about 20deg, ~400' vertical. We skied main days next (12pm) and kept our slope angle below 35 degrees. Even doing this we were continually triggering small to medium sized sluff, some propagating 15-30ft. As the day went on the sluffing mellowed out greatly. Our next run was in hideaway park (1:30pm) and much less cracking was observed. Sluffing was still a concern but there was little to no propagation anymore. For our last run we skied out the emmas (2:30pm) an observed minor sluffing and no propagation. I included the times to give a sense of how the danger increased with the increased pecip rates and then dropped off as the precip rate dropped back to 1in/hr. While the snow was very touchy out there today, it was very manageable with frequent slope cutting and avoiding exposed terrain and other terrain traps. I keep thinking of this danger as high probability low(er) consequence. As long as you use good protocol, travel with a partner, and expect the snow to move a bit, there is some great, safe, powder skiing to be had