Ongoing Instability on Relay Peak at site of 4/8 Avalanche

We went to Relay Peak today to gather more details about the skier-triggered avalanche that occurred there yesterday, 4/8/20 (original report here). Strong NE winds, below-freezing temperatures, and blowing/falling new snow made visibility and travel on the ridges and upper elevations challenging. Snow surfaces that were soft and warm yesterday had refrozen into mostly supportable firm crusts on all aspects and at all elevations above the parking area (8500 ft). On our way in, these crusts remained mostly exposed with only a trace of new snow on them. 

We stuck to low angle slopes and made it to the toe of the debris. Some of these blocks of frozen avalanche debris were large with sides 3 to 4 ft long. Looking up the path we saw the crown near the top of the ridge and ascended a combination of nearby low angle slopes and the bed surface of the avalanche. The crown of this avalanche measured about 2.5 ft at the deepest and tapered off to about 1 ft. It was only about 40 ft wide. We found that at the deepest spot the avalanche had failed on a thin layer of weak snow below the new snow. The crust at the base of the recent snow was barely discernable. We performed several snowpit tests at the crown and they all yielded unstable results on that weak layer (ECTP 22, ECTP 23, CT 12 SC).

We descended low angle slopes back into lower elevation terrain. By this time, about 1/2 to 1 inch of new snow had accumulated on the frozen crusts providing variable dust on crust conditions back to the vehicles.