Door is open for an isolated wet slab event on Feb 14 facets.

With the potential for an isolated one-off event wet slab to occur during this warm spell, I toured Elephant's Hump this morning with the goal to examine how the isolated pockets of weak Feb 14 facets in the area were fairing

As expected, last night's refreeze in this area was poor to weak at best. Only the top 1 to 3 inches of the snowpack had refrozen last night at 1F- hardness. On sunny slopes this refreeze was fully gone upon my 10 am arrival with air temp at +8C (about 47 deg F). Cumulative amounts of wet snow from the past few days was deep with several inches of ski penetration and over a foot of boot penetration.

I headed for a shaded spot on a NE aspect at about 8,000' where I knew the old Feb 14 facet layer had remained weak. Digging into the snowpack it was apparent that melt water had wetted the top 4 inches or so of the Feb 14 facet layer. Here I had repeatable ECTP-4 results, failing within the Feb 14 facet layer at the wetted front. I expected that I might be able to trigger a whumph while approaching or exiting the snowpit area, but non occurred.

As I moved up into near treeline terrain, I found better ski supportability on an open E aspect at around 9,100'. Once I moved off of this slope to the NE and N, I was right back in the deeper muck.

I made a point to steer around and avoid engaging with all avalanche terrain terrain today. As a result I did not trigger any wet loose avalanches today, but felt that I easily could have.