Late afternoon wx obs: skies started partly cloudy and quickly increased to overcast as cloud deck around 10,500' moved in. Temps in the upper 20s at the car, estimated upper teens on summit. Light winds blowing out of the west up high. Yesterday's squall deposited 1cm of snow.
Large, deep slab at 10,600' on northerly aspect above Cherry Creek. Also, evidence of previous activity in the E Fk of the Salmon. Spotted debris from large slides on E-NE-N aspects. None of these were particularly fresh, but they weren't present after the big cycle in mid-January, I suspect they are related to some of the big wind events we've had in the past two weeks.
Surfaces looked less friendly a few days ago than they did today. I suspect that warmer ambient temps and a few days with less direct solar and more reflected solar helped things look a bit better. Alpine is a total mixed bag, most surfaces cleaned down to firm, aging wind slabs and a widespread, very icy surface left behind after in intense riming event during the last storm cycle (on 2/6, I believe). I've found this in the Sawtooth alpine as well, not sure where else it exists. Not super concerning, though I wouldn't be surprised to see some smaller slides on it where it takes a quick load. Probably more of a concern as a potential gradient concentrator as it gets buried. Surfaces that look the worst right now are on middle elevation, sheltered slopes on the solar margins, where an FC+MFcr+FC combo exists, but this problem is fairly specifically located in the Boulders, thanks to frequent strong winds. In more exposed terrain, winds have cleaned most of the FC off the top of this combo. I suspect this problem would be more widespread in terrain that does not see as much wind (Smokys and into the southern Sawtooths).