Should've Gone Bowling Instead

We slogged our way to middle elevations in the Middle Fork to get a sense of how deeply the rain has saturated the snowpack. 

• We saw numerous wet loose and slab avalanches on steep cutbanks near the highway. Cam observed many of these yesterday, but several appeared fresher. We suspect small slides were still failing down low overnight or early this morning. 
• The snowpack was isothermal with full depth boot penetration and boot top ski penetration below about 5700 feet. We could kick off small to medium rollers and tiny wet loose slides below that elevation. 
• Above 5700 feet, the top 3 to 6 inches of snow were fully wet. The top 18 to 24 inches were moist. Wet loose slides seemed increasingly likely with this top heavy structure. Though we stayed away from steep terrain, it was easy to get large rollers tumbling down even lower angled slopes by bowling snowballs down the hill. We were sure we could have triggered large wet loose avalanches from any steep terrain. (More info in the snowpack tab)
• We did not see avalanches above the highway corridor, but we had poor visibility with fog obscuring the surrounding terrain.

We turned around at 6100 feet when we became soaked through our goretex, despite having finally made it above the rain line. Skiing down was slow, careful, and not good.