Recent Avalanches

There was a massive natural avalanche from the top of the ridge (9500') with debris evident down to about 8700'. This avalanche, estimated to be 2500' wide, was reported to the UAC by someone with a telephoto lens on Dec. 29th. Subsequent storms have covered much of the evidence, but we saw a lot of tree damage and many piles of avalanche debris. We did many pole penetrations on the way up from the bottom of Moonlight at 7900' and every one of them showed the facet layer about 2.5-3' below the surface and a total height of snow of about 4'. Despite the presence of the weak layer everywhere we looked, we did not get even a single settlement, crack, or whoompf all day. Kind of surprising. Still, we were very careful to stay on slopes of 30 degrees or less. Once we got onto the debris field at 8700', it was a completely different story. The snow was deeper than our ski poles and we couldn't find a weak layer through the top 4-5' of the snowpack. We didn't dig a pit to see if the facets are now buried, but the snowpack felt very solid, as it usually does, walking on top of avalanche debris. Sorry no pictures as the day turned into fog and rime.