Observations from Echo Lakes

Went for a lovely tour around Echo Lakes today. The ridge between Talking Mt and Becker held soft snow near the top but a mix of transitional snow on the more south facing slopes. This morning the south east aspects were still holding several inches of soft new snow but the south west aspects had a generally firmer icy surface. On north facing shady below tree line aspects about 4 inches of soft snow was present. I was curious if the snow might be supportive or if it would ski more like dust on crust. It was definitely the latter with scratchy but enjoyable conditions. If anything on the due north shaded terrain the new snow exhibited signs of near surface faceting with minor loose dry activity on the the steepest turns. Wind drifted snow and small cornices were not very slabby and mostly unreactive to skin tracks and ski kicks. New snow amounts were fairly low and we didn't observe any signs of instability below treeline. 

We climbed up the south facing slopes of Flagpole and found shallower amounts of fresh snow and we experienced a small amount of glopping on our skins indicating these slopes were melting a bit. Descending a north east aspect on Flagpole we were surprised to ride through a large amount of avalanche debris from previous widespread loose wet activity. We guessed this occurred in the Thursday/Friday time period during the warmest rain. While a similar amount of new snow rested on top of the debris it was more challenging to ski than the areas that hadn't slid because the debris had refrozen into a harder form and these slopes were rougher than the terrain without the debris. It appeared that snow around rocks had been the primary starting points for this loose wet activity but it was fairly widespread across two adjacent drainages. It was about 500 wide and appeared to have about 800 feet vertical distance. Many of the large chunks were impressively large.

Photo 1: Little cohesive snow on a small cornice

Photo 2: Significant evidence of recent rime on trees near the Talking Mt. ridge.

Photo 3: Looking back Ralston and there was evidence of recent avalanche activity in the bowl to the south of the peak, possibly with cornice break as the trigger.

Photo 4: Some surface hoar along the tour both on the Talking ridge and here on the north east side of Flagpole in the early afternoon.

Photo 5: There had been significant previous loose wet slides on the NE side of Flagpole. It was not that fun to ride through.