Went up West Willow today hopping to get a look in the Monitors and got shut down on the ridge by high winds and a ground blizzard obscuring any visuals. The only thing I could see was some massive cornices formed from the strong SW winds. It was blowing so hard on the ridge line that it was hard to stand upright. Seems reasonable that there was a natural avalanche cycle sometime in the afternoon due to heavy, dense snowfall, wind loading and a poor snow pack structure on the N facing steeper terrain. Skied the Hourglass which is a lower angle S facing slope in Willow, it was surfy graupel skiing with boot deep penetration. Luckily this kind of snow is perfect for lower angle skiing and pushing slope angles today was not an option. Dug a hole in a wind sheltered NW location around 9000ft and it was easy to see a dense slab sitting on the NSF that formed during last weeks high pressure, a compression test yielded a fairly easy shear on this weak layer.

Photos: snow pit, plentiful graupel, and photo of how much fun low angle skiing can be in this type of snow

With continued strong winds and heavy snowfall the hazard might hit high by tomorrow