Sawatch

Snowpack

we had to turn back on our initial move to the ridge from the pass parking lot do to large propagating cracks around the trees,sign #1.We ended up going up the power line cut and rode back down the power line cut.halfway up the cut we experienced woomphing and cracking as we took the skinner off to the right of the cut.We went up for a second run and took the tighter trees between the power line cut and the perfect trees in here more of the same cracking and woomphing as we got down to the skinner out just 100 yards up from our exit was what appeared to be a natural slide with large debree right at the bottom of this tree run.The crown was 2,1/2-3,4 foot deep it ripped between both large trees and small trees that where right at the height of the snow pack.This little slide went to the ground or close to it at the burried weak crust over facets.We also saw slides on the back side of this ridge on the easterly aspect triggered at the cornice around rock outcrop.When we got back to the parking lot there was a big crown staring us in the face across the parking lot that c-dot ripped out right on the convex role.In retrospect we probably should not have been out yesterday 12/20/10,with conservative choices we made it out safe.There is activity on all aspects with large slide potential out there people be careful