Tuesday's storm snow and wind drifts were unreactive today and have settled out, although I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a reactive wind slab in upper elevation alpine terrain. One thing I try to do when assessing the snowpack is look for instability and not stability, and in even the most unstable snowpack, you can almost always find stability. As we were seeing the recent storm slab was unreactive, we considered entering into steeper, north-facing terrain. However, in a pit at 9,600' on a north aspect, we got full propagation in faceted snow on the March 2/3 dust layer - ECTP24 down 110 cms (3.5'). Although the PWL problem has become dormant, this pit result had us back off from the steeper, north-facing terrain we were considering entering, and we instead chose a less steep slope on a NW aspect.

Photo and video of pit with extended column test. (In the video, I say the location is at 9,000' - it is at 9,600'.)

Going forward, I believe our season-long PWL problem has become dormant, but this pit tells me the structure of strong snow over a weak PWL still exists in some isolated areas.

Photos of some natural avalanche activity that occurred during Tuesday's storm with heavy snowfall and strong westerly winds. These avalanches all ran within the storm snow.

- Mill A Basin below the east face of Mt. Reynolds

- Paradise below Raymond Glade

- Raymond Slabs

- Two from Whitesnake on Gobblers Knob