Recent Avalanches

There were many small storm snow slides that came out predictably from >40 degree pitches right under rock outcrops, but were all pretty small, isolated and manageable. By the time we got up into Talking Mountain area, prettimuch every little outcrop had already released the storm snow, particularly the more northerly faces that had really hard old snow interfaces. We skied the SE facing Goldminer pitch on ultra light powder with an edge-able bomb proof layer underneath, and we could not get any type of shear on at the storm snow interface. Then we went over to the observers left of El Pinche to see how the snow bonded on more westerly faces. Yesterday we got some late sun, so we were hoping that the new snow bonded on these aspects. Luckily, our hypothesis was confirmed with a snow pit at 11,200 (aspect: 300, slope 35 deg, total depth 210cm ) on an aspect and shading to mimic El Pinche. We had a result ECTN9 @ 163 cm that had a very irregular shear and no propagation. We had no other results in the pit - which we dug down to about 50 cm from the ground (150cm from surface) - pretty solid. Overall depth at the spot varied from 200 to 250cm within a couple of steps (probably talus underneathe). With this result, we decided to go up El Pinche, and I did quick had shear pits to ~3' at regular intervals. Everything looked great until we got to about 11,900' where I got a shear at 60 cm on some old grappel that I hadn't found below. It was late, and there was lots of hangfire further up on the observers right, so we decided to pull skins and ski from there right above the pinch point. The west faces were the only ones that didn't feel a little slippery at the interface, and the lack of consolidation of the snow gave us the perfect window to get into the alpine to ski this line - a rarity in the La Sals. The snow had slabbed up considerably down low on our way out, and I think the new storm snow might still be a little reactive tomorrow, particularly on north faces where the old snow surface was really hard. There was also some late day wind and the ridgelines had some wind loading that could result in a couple of slightly larger slides than we saw today.