Hi Dan,
Thanks for posting about some of your experiences here. When my party triggered a large avalanche in the Enchantments a few years ago posting about it on TAY generated some helpful responses that helped us process it. Fortunately no one in our group was injured.
I skied on Kendall on April 10, the day after this avalanche and I dug a pit near the bottom of the slide (about where the second left to right switchback is in this photo
here
). I didn't climb up to the crown.
It's been two months, I didn't take notes and my memory is a little foggy but here's what I remember. There had been some wind the previous night from climbers right to left that had cross loaded the slope with a 3" of snow or so and hardened the surface. Below that I remember getting several low quality medium strength results on compression tests (elbow or first couple shoulder hits) 12 or 18" down (? not certain on the depth). I thought the snow was stable enough for skiing on April 10 and remember actively lobbying my group to ski some of the higher elevation slopes skiers left before the day warmed up and the sun moved over to heat the western facing slopes. I was overruled and we ended up taking a few laps in the trees below. Take this info for what it's worth as the snowpack probably changed significantly from April 9 to 10 in ways I don't want to speculate about. In addition, the snow in the starting zone was probably different then lower down since those trees end at a col/ridge that gets actively wind loaded in storms.
Hope this helps. Good luck with your recovery.
Matt Peters
