Wet Snow All Aspects Near Twin Peaks

About 8 to 12 inches of recent dense heavy snow existed on top of ~ 16 inches of wet snow on all aspects in the Twin Peaks / Grouse Rocks area today. The new snow warmed up very quickly and started showing signs of loose wet instabilities early. Before we even started skinning, we noticed several recent loose wet avalanches. Some looked like they had new snow on top of the debris and others looked like they had occurred this morning.

We continued to look for signs of instabilities while skinning up. We were able to trigger large pinwheels around 10:20 am on a SE facing slope at ~7600 ft. We heard, saw and felt active, continuous dripping and shedding from the trees. We stuck to low angle open slopes as much as we could to avoid the bombs of snow falling out of the trees. As we skinned up the ridge and could see more terrain we noticed more recent loose wet avalanche activity. Above 8000 ft. colder snow existed and the new snow was more supportable.

We decided to descend a low angle SE facing ridge. During our descent, we were able to ski cut the tops of some steeper slopes. The snow we pushed onto these steeper slopes triggered large pinwheels that ran downslope for hundreds of feet. Some of these reached 6 ft in diameter before they broke apart.

We decided to get off the southerly slopes and move to more shaded N facing terrain. The trees were dripping just as much on these aspects as on the E and SE aspects. There was also evidence of recent roller balls and pinwheels as well as some loose wet activity. The snow felt wet and heavy. We skinned about 500 ft up a ridge and stopped to talk about turning around and cutting our tour short based on how fast the snow seemed to be warming. At that point we noticed a large natural pinwheel come off some rocks and roll down a steep NE facing slope nearby. We decided to turn around and call it a day before it got any warmer. On our way down around noon, we were able to place some ski cuts on a ridge above a steep slope. These ski cuts caused D1 loose wet avalanches that ran down the N and NNW facing slopes below them.  It is likely that these would have grown in size and become more widespread as the day warmed up but we did not stick around to find out.