Reloading Slopes and Wind Slab Failures on Judah

Evidence of numerous natural wind slab avalanches from yesterday or last night existed along Wildflower Ridge and on the E face of Mt. Judah. These looked to have been relatively large and with chucks of debris still poking out from under a mantle of new snow. Test slopes along Wildflower ridge had already refilled with more wind slabs and ski kicks and small cornice pieces dropped onto the test slopes caused the new wind slabs to fail on these reloaded slopes. Sometimes stepping on the low angle slopes up to 20 ft. away would trigger a steeper wind loaded slope. Shooting cracks up to 30 ft. long also occurred in lower angle wind-loaded terrain. In more sheltered areas no evidence of storm slab instability was noted. 

Snowpit data targetting the near crust facets that they are buried about 1m below the surface.  Tests on these layers in this area did not yield unstable results. In more exposed areas tender wind slabs existed on leeward slopes as discussed in the quick obs section.

Snowfall and wind-loading continued throughout the day.