1/19/20 Mt. Catherine

Braved the warming temps on Sunday to see what we could find. Skinned up hyak and down the other side, crossing the creek behind hidden valley lift was a little spicy but manageable. From there, it was a lot of breaking trail through heavy snow, though we found a punched-in skin track for a portion of the climb through the old growth below the cliff bands.

We observed small storm slab (2-4") that fractured easily on the interface with the colder snow, but very little was propagating or seemed to have the potential to step down. Tree bombs were a real hazard throughout the day, and there was evidence of a few small (D1) slab pockets that released likely due to tree bombs. Largest we saw was 8' across. Skiing was grabby and heavy.

There was no crust encountered, though a friend in the alpental valley on the same day observed one.