Headed up the Porter Fork road in search of corn in either S facing Butler Basin or the White Snake SW facing off of Gobblers peak. Been in the LaSals for the last week and today seemed like the best day to go out in the next few. Porter Fork road has melted out quite a bit since my last trip there 9 days ago, dirt and asphalt are starting to rear their ugly heads. The snow had a good refreeze on the N facing, so we decided to walk up the gully up to a previous wet slide that came out of the main gut of Gobblers, once we got to the toe of the slide we realized it ran about 1,500 vertical feet and left a nice debris pile, since the snow was frozen and we had the right tools to walk straight up the center punch to the peak that's what we did. The White Snake SW facing had melted out to the degree that we decided to ski S facing Butler Basin instead. We were worried that we were too late but when we got there we discovered that we hit it just right at 11:40 am, perfect smooth corn all the way to the bottom, the wind was strong from the S and that's what kept the surface snow in good condition at that late time of day. Greg was right about the shallow refreeze, on our skin out we were experiencing cracking and collapsing on almost every step. The surface was frozen but the snow underlying it was not, a perfect set up for wet slab avalanches. Once we made our hasty retreat back to the Mill Creek Ridge line we went to ski Gobblers NW face next to the slide we walk up by, it was around 12:30 at this point and the NW face was warming but not there yet so we waited until 1:00 pm and skied perfect corn until we got a little under 8900 ft. Then things got damp, slow, and painful. Seemed like the only hazard out there today was the threat of a wet slab avalanche, which are very tricky to predict. We did not note any wet activity in the area today and we got back to the porter parking lot at 2:20 pm
Photos: One of the may wet slides on Gobblers NW face, glide avalanches in Broads, old wet activity in Mineral Fork, Raymond SE facing and Butler Basin.
