Deep Creek observations

We toured in Deep Creek today, taking advantage of familiar terrain, knowing where we could limit our exposure to terrain 30 degrees or less in slope angle for anything larger than a test slope. Snowfall rates during the morning hours were S2 to S5 with a lull around noon. After that convective snow showers picked up with snowfall rates mostly S1 with brief spikes to S5.

We saw one small natural storm slab avalanche with a crown of less that 1 foot. We viewed the avalanche from about 100m away, in steeper terrain than we were utilizing for our travel today. We had some minor amounts of storm slab cracking while breaking trail and were able to trigger some minor amounts of wind slab cracking along the ridgetop. Surface loose dry of the top 4 to 6 inches of the storm snow was most common. On the few test slopes where we were able to get a slab to move, it quickly broke up and traveled down slope as loose dry due to the low density of the storm snow.