Went back to No Name Bowl today to ski it. Saw that it had avalanched during the avy cycle on Wednesday and figured a foot of new light density snow would make it a good bet. We were not set on skiing it we just wanted to take a look and see if it was reasonably safe. After descending to a spot with little or no hang fire I cautiously steeped down off the crown to have a look at the snow. There were a few things we wanted to check before any decision was made to ski it, first was to see if the facets the slide ran on were still in the bottom of the snow pack, after digging a hand pit we discovered that the facets had been destroyed or removed in the avalanche and the bed surface was a hard layer about 4 or 5 inches deep sitting on dirt with about 15inches of light density snow on top. We also wanted to see if the new snow had formed a slab, which it hadn't. Next step was to suss out the hang fire, didn't much want to ski under anything that might pull out, we didn't like the skiers right side of the bowl because it did not clean out like the main bowl did, and the skiers left had hang fire that was not to our liking. The final step was to figure out our route out, which is always a good thing to do before diving into a bowl that you have to hike out of. This is the kind of the process I go through every time when I ski paths that have slid recently. Of note is each avalanche is DIFFERENT and just because the weak layer was destroyed in this slide does not mean any of the other paths that avalanched a couple days ago are the same, some might still have the weak layer in the basement, some might have reloaded and are primed to run again, each separate slope must be closely looked at before messing with it. With all that said if we go into high pressure the whole bowl is going to facet out rapidly, thin snow pack and cold clear nights might lead to this bowl becoming a repeater when we get significant snow again. Photos: Hand pit with no facets and just light density snow on top of the hard bed surface, NE winds on the high ridge lines, a look at the bowl from the bottom so you can to illustrate our thinking.

FORECASTER COMMENT: Great analysis of how to do the work, Mark.