Avalanche: Turnagain

Warm temps and hot sun. We toured up Sunburst ridge and found the new snow to be bonding well excluding slick bed surfaces. The snow was sensitive where consolidated, when gaining the small bit wind lip to the ridge the wind loaded snow failed easily. All wind loaded snow we encountered was very low density. We found isolated cracking underfoot on the ridges.

We poked towards the north side of Sunburst and noticed a windslab that ran on a cross loaded north aspect in a drainage .
While examining this crown from a distance we heard 2 “firework explosion” loud whoomps across the valley in 5 minutes. Our guess was the hot sun on the southerly aspects of the library triggered the settling. No avalanche was witnessed or heard after the whoomphs. We skied back down Sunburst in the sun. The snow surface was gaining surface sun effect on southerly aspects. Surface snow easily formed snowballs by the time we left around 1. Ski quality was unaffected. One small dry loose sluff ran near our tracks in a 35+ degree rocky area.