Complex snow pack at the moment imo. Seems like there are 4 or more layers that could present problems.
There is the light snow from the end of the storm sitting on more dense snow that fell yesterday that has been wind packed or turned into a slab. That is sitting on the large amount of light snow that fell Sunday/Monday. Then there is the Christmas snow sitting on a crust that sits on facets etc. etc.
For the first time this season I experienced two large collapses.
The first one came after we approached the east facing bowl of Reynolds peak. Someone had already dropped a car sized cornice on the slope and the main bowl had been skied. We then dropped our own healthy cornice on the slope with just the top 4-6 inches of light density snow sloughing not running full track. I took this to be a good sign and got on the slope with the plan to see how the skiing would be. I did a bit of poll probing and felt the many aforementioned layers. Decided to dig a pit. Pics show dirty shears of new snow old snow interface, ice crust pre christmas storm with weak layers well defined above and below.
Just as I hit the column with one tap from the elbow the entire slope collapsed dropping me an inch or two. Nothing ran. We left the slope. The second large collapse came on the up track out of BWG on a sheltered 20 degree slope.
