23-24

We skinned up the shoulder just south of the Bacon Rind skillet, through the upper meadows to the top of the Skillet and descended a similar route. 

On our ascent we got no cracking or collapsing, but we did get some big collapses while we were descending through the trees in the bottom 1/3 of the ski run. We dug on SE and NE aspects in the upper meadows at around 8600 ft. ECTPs in the 20s on the surface hoar at the top of the December facets. 

The skillet slid sometime recently. Based on the snow on top I'm guessing Thursday-Friday last week (Feb 15-16th), but it could have happened up to a week earlier. Broke ~2 ft deep, 150 ft wide, and it was hard to tell how far it ran, but I'm estimating 200 vertical feet.

We stuck to our conservative plan and enjoyed great low angle powder skiing and then bushwacking back to the car. 

From IG 2/18/24: “Human triggered slides in cooke yesterday.”

Saw this today.  Relatively recent and a deeper failure than some of the other naturals on Saddle and the Football Field.  

Close to the ridge and the starting zones of nearby avalanche paths, we triggered a large collapse that sent shooting cracks out a couple hundred feet. If the slope had been any steeper, we would have triggered an avalanche. Photo: GNFAC

Close to the ridge and the starting zones of nearby avalanche paths, we triggered a large collapse that sent shooting cracks out a couple hundred feet. Photo: GNFAC