Storm slab cycle in the Northern Whitefish Range

Plenty of glaring red flags today at Red Meadow:

• Widespread storm slab cycle, D1 to D2 soft slabs breaking ~1 foot deep on the near surface facet storm interface.  Most of these appeared to run this morning.  We observed slides in windloaded and windprotected terrain, all aspects and mostly mid and upper elevations.  Most of the debris stopped mid-track but some ran longer to Red Meadow Lake.  We also triggered several similar slides from a ridgeline; one was remotely triggered from ~30 feet away.  
• We observed shooting cracks while ascending a moderately angled slope.  We also got several collapses as we neared the ridgeline into thicker, denser slabs.  There was about 12" - 14" of new snow at mid and upper elevations.  Strong westerly winds were drifting the snow at upper elevations.  We got easy, propagating results in an extended column test. 
• Given all of these signs of instability, we kept to very dense trees or slope angles less than 35 degrees.