New snow was sitting on top of a hollow wind-board in many places and while we could get some sloughing in the new snow we did not hear or feel any collapses or see cracking below the wind board. There were numerous large cornices on ridgelines, and huge wind rolls in unlikely places below treeline. There were also places where the wind had eroded the new snow away and down to a hard surface. Cornices were not as sensitive as we would have expected and what was surprising was the amount of snow in the trees considering how strong the winds have blown recently.

Photo of cornice east facing Twin Lakes Pass 10,100'. Photo also shows snow on the leeward (east facing) side of the trees

Photo of wind-eroded surface below treeline 9,600'. Photo also shows wind not on the windward (west facing) side of the trees

In higher elevation, thicker snowpack areas there were places with rounding facets on the ground and the weaker snow was above a crust at the new/old snow interface. We observed the remants of an avalanche in Heaven's Gate (East Facing 10,330') that looked to be 100-150' and ran 500' vertical where there was snow from the powder cloud on the trees in the runout zone up to 6' above the snow surface. This is a repeater avalanche that was reported on December 3, 2023. We could see an old crown line and there were 2 avalanches reported in this zone on January 10, 2024.

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We were not going onto the bed surface to look at the weak layer as the crown face had only about 4" showing above the newest snow and wind-drifted snow. More weight is on the way and I think that repeater avalanches, places with a thinner snowpack that already slid this season will be the first to avalanche if they haven't already. These will be followed by thinner snowpack areas as we have seen in the avalanche observations over the past few days.

Photo of filled back in crown line (Heaven's Gate)