May 21, 2005 - As Joe and I...

May 21, 2005 - As Joe and I neared this rise in the North Ridge, we saw a large area of polished quartzite that had been the bed surface for an earlier glide avalanche. To our unease, there was still a large slab of snow resting on more slabby quartzite just beyond. This snow looked really unstable as it had already buckled in two places. Note the meltwater trickling down the polished quartize in the left of the photo. Besides making the scrambling here seem dangerous (our reason for backing off), it also made us uneasy as we knew that the same process was undermining the bonding between the snowpack above and the rock that it rested on.