Sat., Feb. 26: are you heading out?

Today in Baker area, we were near Huntoon Point when we heard a sharp cracking sound from the general direction of Bagley basin and assumed it was an avalanche. Shortly after, saw copter flying low over Table Mountain. Hoping that it was not serious for anyone.

Stuck to the trees and the powder was really excellent.

Spent the day on Skyline ridge and ended up spending most of the time in the heavy trees. About 5" of really light fluffy new powder ontop of the still quite soft snow from the storms earlier in the week. Haven't had a fun time with great snow like that in the trees in a while.

~4900 feet, SSE aspect, open slope ~30 degrees. Compression tests were pretty hard (~24) but the shear quality was really clean on the crust at 22-24 inches down. Extended column tests were very much propagating in a single high energy failure, but again at counts 23-23. Curious to hear observations about tomorrow and NWAC's black ring of certain death. I'll be staying home.

I'd be wary of giving or getting a green light on whether a particular location is "safe for a tour" this time of year and in current conditions (thinking of what we knew on Friday about Saturday). If you get some field info that adds to the picture you can get from the NWAC snowpack assessment and avy hazard prediction, great, as long as you're still making your own assessments before you get to the tour and more importantly while you're on the tour.

ETA: I did indeed head out yesteday - to a Snoqualmie tour I know well and have skied in various risk levels (hence, I have a pretty good sense of terrain and how the snow behaves on it), which has a pretty safe ascent route, which allowed good management of risk exposure. We skied windward slopes and stayed heads-up all day, including watching for changes due to the predicted afternoon warming (which never really hit us) and being really mindful of tree wells which definitely had a "lion trap" nature yesterday. Really great skiing similar to what E_N describes. Still a bit low-cover down low with a lot more open holes including open water than I'm used to seeing this time of year.

I agree with Jim. After a long discussion in the car yesterday, we came to the conclusion that snow stability can't be expressed in absolute terms. Even if NWAC data gives low avy danger for a certain region, It doesn't mean that there will definitely be no avalanches. Although data from TRs can be extremely useful, it doesn't necessarily mean that you won't encounter Avalanche danger.