We begin a Level I course tonight, so we only had time for a quick field check today. We used the Eaglecrest lifts to access higher elevations, where we found a dusting of up to 5 cm of fluff over the windblown crusty areas from the last NE wind event, and some small and very sensitive but also thin and small windslabs.

We dropped into upper Hilda Creek to see how less wind-affected areas were doing. The thin slush layer that was on the surface on January 4th has now frozen into a sometimes turnable and sometimes breakable crust under the new fluff.

We did a quick AK Block - Rutschblock test pair on a NE aspect 35° slope at a relatively low 540 m. On both tests, the skis penetrated below the slab. It took multiple hard jumps (#6) to get a release. We did not do a detailed profile today.

We saw no signs of instability except in freshly windloaded areas, though the weak layer of facets remains on the icy crust from the last big thaw, and we know from other testing that it has high spatial variability. There is still some chance of triggering it in the wrong spot, but it will take more loading to initiate the next avalanche cycle.