Went up Butler Fork and skied the steep W facing lines into Scary Gully. For those that don’t know Scary Gully is the narrow part of the drainage on the way to upper Butler Basin with steep slopes on both sides, basically a terrain trap with no real escape. The W facing lines we skied were 40 degrees plus in the bottom but the reason for trusting them was no old October snow. The tops of these slopes are at an elevation of 8600ft and a quick hand pit revealed around 2 feet of snow with no facets at the bottom and minimal layering. The only instabilities noted was sluffing of the recrystallized surface snow which has faceted quite a bit with the last 3 cold clear nights, and will most likely continue to weaken with cold nights, low sun angle and a temperature gradient. It looked like there was a bit of wind damage in the higher terrain of Mt Raymond and upper Butler Basin.

photo of surface sluffing.

I think moderate is a good call at this point in time for most terrain, but I still wouldn’t trust the upper elevation, N facing radical terrain.