Cornices and Warming snow on Mt. Judah and Trestle Peak

Today, we saw a wide range of elevation zones and aspects between Mt. Judah and the bottom of Trestle Peak. On the way up Judah in the morning, the snow on sunny W and E aspects had just started to warm up. The top inch or so had started to get wet. We stopped by several wind-loaded test slopes at various elevations. Ski kicks broke the cornices above these slopes, but when the oven to refrigerator-sized blocks hit the slopes below, they did not trigger cracking or additional signs of unstable wind slabs. The cornices along the summit ridge of Judah are massive, and we stayed well away from them. 

We dug into the snow in 3 different places at mid and lower elevations to look for any signs of lingering instability. We found the old snow layers, but our tests did not produce unstable results. We moved on from snowpit tests to ski cuts on steep test slopes, which also did not show any signs of lingering instability. Despite this lack of evidence of instability, we decided to be patient and stick to lower-angle slopes that held soft snow. The shady N aspects still had cold snow, but we started to trigger roller balls and pinwheels on sunny E and ENE aspects by midday. Clouds also began to increase over the mountains around that time. 

We also saw 2 recent avalnaches in below treeline terrain on Trestle Peak. These looked like they occurred yesterday (3/29) or the day before (3/28). Based on the depth of the crown it looks like they failed in the recent storm snow and not on the older weak layers.