Observation: Mt. Raymond

Tour today was Mount Raymond from Millcreek. We did trigger a class 1 slide on south-facing Mt Raymond. This was a pocket of recent low-density storm snow that had the right aspect and angle to the sun and warmed just enough. ~15 cms (6") thick.

Drew described it perfectly in Tuesday's forecast - it's all about the aspect right now. Ascending southwest and west aspects were generally stable and we found at most pockets of old snow down near the ground. Once we gained the ridge heading up towards Mt Raymond we had a huge audible collapse on a steep northeast aspect (video below).

Overall snowpack in Millcreek looks stable on all aspects below 9000', but the avalanche observation from Peter Earle from Sunday in Porter Fork on a shady northwest aspect at 8400' indicates there are pockets of preserved weak snow at the ground. Fortunately, quite easy to use an inverted pole to probe for structure where there is weak snow at the ground.