Soft Surface Snow on Job's Sister/Massive Avalanche Debris in Barber Creek

Skied the North Face of Job's Sister today, dropping around 1:00 pm. Ski conditions were excellent, with a few inches of soft, unconsolidated, slightly warmed snow, sitting on a supportable crust (see photo). No slab formation was evident, there was next to no cornice development off the ridges, and there was even minimal sluffing despite slopes steeper than 40 degrees. There was old avalanche debris running out from the bottom of the face, but it was buried by the snowfall of the past week. We toured out from the top of Heavenly, and encountered a variety of surfaces on the west side of Porcupine Ridge. We touched on all aspects from S-W-NW, and found soft winter snow on the NW aspects, and crusts that ranged from breakable to fully supportable on the solars and off solars. We descended a short SW facing slope at about 11:00 am, and it was fully supportable, and just starting to soften in the sunshine. No signs of instability were noted on the tour. Air temperatures were above freezing, and sunshine was strong, although we did encounter a light to moderate SW wind, that was enough to keep things a bit chilly on the summit. 

After Job's Sister, we headed East to the top of the Barber Creek drainage, and skied that couloir to the valley, starting at around 3:00. We skied cold, excellent wintery snow on the right, north east facing side of the couloir, while the left, south east facing side was refreezing with a thin breakable crust. Below 8100' we started to encounter loose wet debris, althought it was still soft, and made for pleasant skiing. Once we hit 6700', the snow turned to completely unsupportable, mushy schmoo, and it stayed that way all the way to the valley, with lots of loose wet debris originating from the steep, rocky sidewalls. Starting at about 6500', and running for over 1000' vertical, we found the remnant debris of a massive, wet avalanche (see photos). The sidewalls of the debris were up to 10 feet tall in places, and it gouged out parts of the bottom of the couloir. There were numerous medium sized trees in the debris, and individual chunks of the debris dwarfed humans. The debris was over 10 feet deep in many places, and the scale was very impressive. It seems to have run relatively recently, although not in the last several days, as there were a few inches of snow on top of most of the debris. There was no obvious point of origin higher in the couloir.

By the end of our day, high gray cloud cover had moved in, and it was almost completely overcast, althought sunlight was still filtering through.