While out on our tour today, we experienced what I can only describe as a sudden winter squall move through around 11:30-12:00. Snowfall went from low to >1 inch per hour and wind picked up dramatically to >15 mph. Given visibility issues related to the whiteout, we decided to turn around.
Up until this point we did not experience any signs of instability. One skier who passed mentioned some dry, loose sluff on his run.
After the sudden weather change, we experienced several small soft slab avalanches that would propogate outwards. These slabs were 2-5 inches. We experienced shooting cracks when walking/skiing on low angle terrain. We remote triggered several avalanches above us as well on several different aspects.
Today was a great lesson in how instability can suddenly change with heavy snowfall and how danger rating can quickly rise during the day.
