The main issue today was the wind drifted snow, once the winds switched to south-southwest they seemed to influence almost every aspect and all elevations. It was cranking at upper ridgelines, but also blowing down into the trees and scouring all south-facing aspects. Across the area, there are signs of wind drifted snow, from cracking, pillow-like snow surfaces, and varying thickness wind crusts. We started on the west side of Reynolds and went around to the east side, on all aspects we traveled we could find signs of the wind impacting the snowpack.
The wind drifted snow is going to continue to add a load to the snowpack and we are worried it could begin to step down into the old October/November facets. We set out today to look at the avalanche triggered on the
East face of Reynolds Sunday to see if it stepped down into the old October/November facets. While the entire face had been pretty wind drifted back in, it appeared that within the slide path there were a few areas that stepped down deeper than just the new snow/old snow interface. I have circled that area in a photo below. Since the entire crown was broken and most of the slide path was pretty filled back in - it was hard to tell if the avalanche from Sunday stepped down into the October/November facets and since had just had a lot of natural cornice fall. But the deeper sections lead me to believe that repeater slopes that have an overall shallower snowpack on the east through northwest facing aspects will become suspect as we continue to add more wind load.
Below are photos of signs of wind drifted snow, another recent avalanche spotted near Butler Basin with the crown lightly noted, intact wind crusts, and the recent Reynolds avalanche with the deeper sections noted.
