Observation: Turnagain

Toured up the NE ridge of Magnum where we found breakable crust down low followed by windslab at the rollover. Continuing on we pushed up to the top staying well away from the cornice that hangs over the S face. Once on top we leaned over the S face at the point where the cornice doesn’t overhang, however even then we heard and felt settling and quickly backed off. We then skied a north facing run off Magnum which we entered by dropping low on the ridge to avoid the windslab that is on and just below the summit ridge.

Afterwards we toured up to the weather station and skied a NE facing run down towards Lyon creek. I slid into a bowl right below the weather station to find a 2″ thick layer of windslab that cracked and propagated across the upper bowl. We backed off and skied down a ridge until we were able to enter the bowl well below the wind affected area.

We saw evidence of natural wet slides on N aspects of Magnum and NE and NW aspects of Sunburst. The debris piles on the NW side of Sunburst are about 3′ deep.

Took pictures of all the things in today’s avalanche bulletin! Terrible breakable crust but it sure was sunny!