exploring the area North and East of Pilot.  There is a lot of sweet terrain that is not that difficult to access.  We had initially planned on going straight to the “Top of the World”, but settled on the bowl just East of Pilot Peak.  Next time I take this route I will spend more time skiing the last two runs of the day.  Check out the picks in the Snow Snob Gallery!  Happy New Year!!!

Tony Z and I toured Mores Creek Summit area on Sunday December 20^th.  Snow pack is still a little low at the Mores Creek Parking lot with a lot of brush and stumps still showing.  The SNOTEL showed 34” which seemed consistent depending on the aspect.  We followed the skin track north of the road along the ridge line to the “Tree of Life” where we dug a pit and did a compression test on the NE aspect on a 20-25 degree slope around 7200’.  We found the snow pack stable on this slope with the column failing on the last hit from the shoulder so we decided to ski the slope.  The only area of concern was the bottom8-10” which consisted of weak, faceted snow.  On the skin track back up we noticed a rather large avalanche (see pictures in Snow Snob member photos) on the climbers right.  This made us a little leery about any further runs that day so we decided to fight the brush and stick to some safe slopes on the way back to the car.  On the way out we noticed multiple avalanches on Freeman and one that appeared to be well over 200 feet at the crown.  Tony talked to a couple of dude’s while I was snapping some pictures and they said they were up the previous Thursday and it sounded like there were bombs going off all over the place.  Things are setting up to be a sketchy winter with the depth hoar and the large temperature fluctuation in the mountains (the temp gage on my car said 43 degrees when we left around 2:00).  Be safe and smart if you are headed out and feel free to post any observations in the Forum.