Wind Loading in Ainger Lake Basin

Toured into Ainger Lake Basin in the Northern Bridgers today. From the Shafthouse Trailhead we could see debris from past wet snow avalanches coming from Ainger Peak and Hard Scrabble Peak area. The slide in Ainger Lake Basin must have been at least a few days old as the slide path and debris were covered in new snow from the last snowfall. The evidence of multiple slides we saw in Ainger Basin looked like they came from rocks shedding snow in the warm weather we've been having. Our objective was the middle couloir on Ainger Headwall. It was very windy in the basin. The slope above Ainger Lake Basin that we had to cross to get to the couloir was heavily wind loaded. We toured up and the snow felt stable so I decided to slowly skin out to see how the snow on this slope felt. It quickly became hollow sounding and we turned around and got a couple laps in for the day from there. Up high in the basin sun baked slopes that froze over night were very slick and hard with a couple inches of new snow on top making skinning difficult in places as well.