Signs of unstable wind slabs and warming on Stevens Peak and Red Lake Peak.

We toured the terrain between Stevens Peak and Red Lake Peak today. New snow amounts in this area at 10:30 am were a settled 4 to 5 inches in shaded areas and a settled 2 inches in sun exposed areas.

As soon as we reached treeline we looked at some NE aspect, wind loaded test slopes and were able to trigger shooting cracks in wind slabs 6 to 8 inches deep. Finds signs of wind slab instability right off the bat and seeing ongoing drifting snow on the ridgetops, we choose to focus the rest of our tour on terrain selections that avoided wind slabs.

During our ascent we noted 7 tracks from other parties making descents in the North Bowl of Red Lake Peak without incident. Upon reaching the head of the Alhambra Mine drainage we again looked across at the North Bowl of Red Lake Pk and saw a fresh wind slab avalanche that was newly triggered by a skier or snowboarder. The avalanche initiated from a descent track above a NE aspect cliff band on the lower portion of the bowl. The avalanche traveled through a gap in the cliff band and ran out on an open slope below the cliffs. Tracks were visible entering and exiting the debris. Hopefully the party involved will submit a separate observation with the pertinent details.

We also learned that another party had triggered a wind slab avalanche off of the summit of Stevens Peak this morning that they classified at size D1.5. That avalanche is detailed in this seperate observation.

During our descent we sampled some SE aspect terrain in the 9,000' to 9,200' range and found warming conditions with shallow "hot pow". Roller balls were easy to trigger in this terrain along with small wet loose avalanches on test slope size slope features.