Signs of wet snow instability on Silver Peak.

We toured Silver Peak this morning to look at surface melt-freeze conditions and the wet loose avalanche problem. After ascending our first 500' above the valley floor we moved from the cold air into the warm air up above leftover from the air temperature inversion conditions last night. Snow surface melt was present along our approach by 9 am. As we moved through open areas we noted a 3 to 4 inch surface crust from last night's refreeze with unconsolidated snow below it. Under areas of thick forest canopy, this surface refreeze was absent, consistent with last night's refreeze being driven by radiational cooling during above freezing air temperatures.

Upon gaining the end of the E ridge of Silver Pk at 7,800' we encountered a thin surface melt-freeze crust over recent storm snow on N aspects and wetter but still transitional snow on SE and E aspects. The open SE and E aspects we traveled above 7,500' still held about one inch of recent storm snow sandwiched between the top few inches of wet surface snow and the older crust below. This transitional setup was conducive to wet loose instability again today.

Descending E and SE slopes at 10:45 am we were able to intentionally trigger roller balls and pinwheels 1 to 2 feet in diameter via ski cuts in pockets of terrain that were around 35+ degrees. We intentionally stuck to sub 30-35 degree slopes for the bulk of our descent to avoid the instability associated with the wet loose avalanche problem.