General Observations

Flew into the Susitna glacier on 4/26 and spent the weekend skiing some lines on the surrounding mountains.  In short, the pack on northern and northeastern aspects was extremely stable.  We saw no slides and our pit showed a cohesive slab with low density snow on top of higher density (pic below); we also did not find buried depth hoar (at least to the bottom of our pit, which was about 7 ft deep).  We tried to probe down to the bottom of the pack but could not reach it; estimate there's probably >20 feet of snow in many spots.  We skied a few slopes between 40 and 45 degrees and felt no other signs of instability.  Snow quality was excellent, with 8-10 inches of fresh powder on top of higher density slab.  On the flight in we noticed numerous slab and point releases on southern aspects, probably due to solar loading (pic below).  We also saw a few large slab avalanches and cerac releases on Western and Southwestern aspects, also likely due to solar.  Temps ranged from 0 degrees at night to high 20s during the day.  In the sun it probably got up into the 40s.