Route today was USA Bowl, a look into Scotts, over to No Name, then across S and W Monitor with a exit out Willow Heights. Once again surprised by the lack of natural avalanche activity, Only saw one natural avalanche in the skiers right corner pocket of South Monitor, looked to be cornice triggered, maybe a foot deep and 60 feet wide soft slab not really sure how far it ran but its location was getting heavily wind loaded all day by the strong SW winds. I was getting localized cracking all day on a graupel layer about 4 inches down from the surface, and the surface consisted mostly of graupel also. Dropped a few decent sized cornices into Scotts with no results. We still were not trusting the steeper slopes such as No Name and the Monitors where there was definitely higher density snow resting on lower density, and they were also getting heavily wind loaded. The windward slopes were smooth with about 4 to 5 inches of ski penetration on a spongy base, in the more wind protected areas the snow was inverted and about boot top deep. We were thinking the skiing was not going to be good but were pleasantly surprised at what we found.

Photos: Wind loading on the ridge line, natural soft slab in the corner pocket of S Monitor: Photo by Beau, cracking on a layer of graupel, surface graupel