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Weather Summary

Skies were clear above the Baker Creek drainage until 1400. Passing clouds brought periods of sun and clouds throughout the afternoon, with more sun than clouds. Winds were blowing intermittently, reaching the upper end of light speeds during windy periods and calm during the lulls.

Avalanche Observations

Map of listed avalanches: Avalanche Observation Comments:

I observed the aftermath of a widespread avalanche cycle from 3/10 and 3/14 in the Baker Creek drainage. Many of the large, obvious paths produced large, obvious avalanches. Many small paths produced large avalanches relative to their size (R3-4). The Baker Creek road was hit in multiple locations. I encountered two piles with green trees in them that had been cleared from the road by the groomer. I also observed some wet loose avalanches on road cuts and steep, rocky slopes that appear to have released the previous day (3/20), based on the amount of snow on top of the debris.

Snowpack Observations

This was an off-duty day to rest the brain and find some good skiing and riding. I also checked in on the persistent/deep persistent problem (2/18 weak layer) on shaded aspects. This layer is still fairly obvious with pole probes, but the overlying slab is quite dense and kept my skis and machine from dropping down into the weak layer. The snow "feels good" while riding... but the structure looks ugly when you dig down to it. At 8,300' on a N/NW aspect I found a 100cm thick slab on top of the 2/18 facets. The slab grades from F to 4F in the upper third, 4F+ to 1F+ in the middle third, and P to P+ in the lower third. Meaty. The 2/18 weak layer is compressing, and the weakest portion of it was a roughly 10cm thick facet stack that graded from 4F+ at the base to 4F- at the top. The overlying slab is doing some mechanical compression/compaction of this layer and I suspect that we are on our way towards healing this problem, but we certainly are not there yet. Where I traveled, this felt like a classic low(ish) likelihood/high consequence scenario. My ECTs did not propagate with standard loading steps but did propagate with an additional 10-15 hits from the shoulder. Take home: it is hard to impact this layer, but if you do find a trigger point the resulting avalanche is likely to be large and destructive, and hard to walk away from unscathed.
I did not travel on solars, so I don't have any direct feedback on how the persistent slab problem is behaving there. I did observe a number of large slab avalanches that failed on SE-S-SW-W aspects during the 3/14-15 avalanche cycle.
The new snow since 3/19 was quickly melting, pushing water into the snowpack and making for a bit of a slushy mess in the upper snowpack. I suspect you could have found some places to get in trouble with wet snow issues on low to mid elevation solars.

Terrain Use

Still traveling with a conservative mindset in the aftermath of the major avalanche cycles that we experienced with the past 10 days.