Heavy Snowfall

Wind Loading

We climbed to the Mineral-Mill B South ridgeline in the middle and lower part of the canyon, upper elevations 9,100'. We were in mostly northeast to southeast facing terrain. There was not a lot of people in Mineral today but people were getting into some more high-consequence terrain. We ran into a couple guys who skied West Couloir of Kessler Peak and we noticed tracks in a couple of those couloirs. We also noticed that people were skiing Bonkers in Broad's Fork from the ridgeline. We found that the new snow was well behaved as it seemed warmer and settled from yesterday. Even on steeper slopes it was very well bonded to the snow underneath. At upper elevations along the ridge, I could feel the old wind slabs from yesterday (now covered in new snow) every time I shoved my ski pole in, I could feel it drop through the slab. But we couldn't get any of these to crack out. We crept into terrain up to 35 degrees on short slopes without incident. We did not see any natural avalanche activity in the drainage, nor in Mill B South or what we could see of Broad's Fork. I felt comfortable on most slopes. I did not dig any snow profiles but the snow felt like typical spring snow that settles out fairly quickly after a storm. The strong spring sun did put a sun crust on any sunny aspect and if we get a quick warm up, it could start an active wet stuff cycle in steeper terrain. We did not get into any upper elevation terrain above 9,500', nor any strongly wind affected terrain from yesterday accept for the extreme upper part of the ridge.