Not as Wet in Taylor Fork, but Still Unstable
We rode into Taylor Fork today towards the Beaver Creek wilderness boundary. We saw multiple natural avalanches that happened during the last week, some newer than others and ranging in size (some in gullies others 50-75' wide). Many of these avalanches were old enough to be unrelated to the recent warming. However, at the wilderness boundary on an east-facing slope, we saw one natural wet slab avalanche and several smaller wet loose avalanches that likely happened yesterday during the warm sunny weather.
We felt a large collapse while approaching our snowpit location on an east-facing slope at 9300'. The pit was mostly faceted snow capped by a small cohesive slab and crust. We got an ECTP2, which is a very unstable result. We continued riding and after parking felt another collapse just 20' from our snowmobiles. We dug on a southwest-facing slope at 8800' and again had poor stability test results of ECTP6. Facets near the ground were moist but our stability tests were failing on dry facets above.
Clouds began rolling in around 11 AM, and a strong southwest wind remained throughout the day. Almost all slopes had a crust on them and temperatures remained cold enough that they did not soften.