Snow Observations List

Performed Stability test on Henderson Mountain today. Elevation 9600', SW facing slope. HS 85cm, New Snow 20cm. Of Note, 1mm Rounding/Moist Facets at ground with 1CM Melt Freeze Crust 60cm from surface. 1mm Facets on either side of MFcr. ECTN 6 at new/old snow interface and ECTN25 on MFcr 60cm down. Generally pretty good looking snowpack for November 24. No collapsing or cracking of the snowpack and no recent avalanche activity observed.

Dug near the bottom of the Apron in a zone between the Apron and NW Passage.

NE aspect, 7500 ft, 29 deg slope angle 

Total depth = 95 cm

Snowpack generally good, and the lower snow is surprisingly dense and strong for an early season snowpack. Yay!! There are a couple weak layers in the upper 20 cm, one was the interface with last night's new snow and the other was some graupel, but both only produced ECTNs. 

ECT results

- two ECTNs in the upper 20 or 25 cm with less than 10 taps, one ECT in the lower snowpack with about 22 or 23 taps. 
 

Nice snow and the parking lot was filling up by the time I was back at my car. 
 

I went searching for facets on the Ramp today and came up short on my results. The snowpack is still thin and the few measurements I took showed about a 50-60cm HS in most places. On the ridge itself at 8500', winds were blowing strong from the W, and at mid-mountain, gusts were strong enough to blow your hat off, but the Ramp itself remained relatively non wind-effected. In the few handpits I dug, I did not observe any sort of slab formation, nor faceted snow, but noted about 10-20cm of dense powder on top of moist snow to the ground, especially in thinner areas. I dug a quick pit just off from the ridge and noted an HS of 55cm with an 3cm decomposing crust about 29cm up from the ground. Snowpack ranged from fist hardness down to 1 finger at the base. And though the grains at the ground had some edges and corners, I did not note truly faceted snow at the base. Another thing: around 14:45 a strong burst of graupel fell for about 10 minutes that then changed to snowflakes. The pulse of that storm was dying off off by the time I skied off the Ramp around 15:30. 

My main concern today were all the limestone sharks still very present out there, but in general N/NE facing aspects up high held good snow even after these warm temperatures! 

Wind was ripping on the ridge and creating hard wind slabs 3-6” in depth. Without much new snow to transport they weren’t very large or widespread, but we got cracking and propagation on a steeper terrain feature (Hidden) near the ridge that led to us skiing a different line. The slab development was also found in isolated areas further down from the ridge in cross loaded gullies, but slabs were isolated to breaking at the skis. 

Warm, stormy day. Winds moving a lot of snow around Sawtelle

Sawtelle Pk, Island Park

• 6500' - HS 30cm
• 7000' - HS 35cm
• 7500' - HS 40 cm
• 8500' - HS 50 cm
• 8800' - HS 72 cm

Snow felt warm dense and only lightly faceted. Overall promising start to the season.

Lionhead, West Yellowstone

Barely enough snow at Ski Hill (el 8000') to get there on sleds. Also, very faceted with some surface hoar mixed in midpack. Overall, less snow and more faceted.

Toured up to below Hyalite Peak yesterday morning before the storm. Despite all of the wet snow down low in hyalite, we found a dry snowpack beginning around ~8400’. Around 11am, winds really picked up in the alpine, with constant spindrift coming off cliffs of all aspects. We found lots of wind-affected snow, mainly scoured with the occasional 2-inch wind skin, but the wind was swirling in every direction and we couldn’t pinpoint an exact aspect being loaded.

In areas where the snowpack was deeper (>60cm) hand pits and probing into the snowpack revealed a fairly uniform structure, while thinner areas of the snowpack had more faceting. 
 

The trail to hyalite peak is thin in many spots, but this storm should make the approach much better.

Localized collapsing and cracking yesterday on the upper slopes of Mt. Henderson, SW aspects.  HS ranged from about 30-75cms.  

Snowpit attached from a SW aspect about 9700', HS 50cms, ECTN9 @ 22cms (1-2mm facets above MF crust).

Toured up lick creek on Thursday morning. Mostly Cloudy, pretty warm around 37 degrees. Wind was gusting fairly hard at the ridge from the SW and had deposited and compacted lot of snow on the top of the NE Bowl. Dug a quick pit around around 8000' on the NE side of the ridge. Snowpack was about 60 cm deep and a quick compression test failed around CT 24 on near surface facets about 4 cm from the ground. The block that failed was a cohesive slab about 50 cm thick.

With the inversion and warmer temperatures yesterday, we (group of 3) discovered a super saturated, cohesive snowpack in Hyalite on the approach to High Fidelity. On the first pitch, I narrowly avoided a point release wet loose, probably around D1-1.5. After this we decided to bail. On the rappel, my partner narrowly avoided another wet loose, which he estimated to be D1.5 and deep enough to bury a person past their chest. The sun was not out but the mountains were shedding and there was evidence of warming and wind, because the trees had no snow on them. We were able to make ~2.5 feet in diameter “cinnamon rolls” by rolling a snowball downhill. If you’re going to any of the more exposed climbs in Hyalite, be very mindful of overhead hazards and wet loose problems which you would not expect this time of year. 

Dave and I rode up Little Bear canyon to the cabin today . Strong SW winds had scoured most exposed areas near the cabin at 7500'. We also noticed clear wind drifting along the road. Off trail, the snowpack was supportable underfoot and we were not punching through to the ground. Temps were balmy at the truck, 45° when we left around 11am. 

From IG: "Isolated pockets on leeward slopes in the northern bridgers today… most on north facing couloirs. More prevalent down low where the snow was getting warm by 1pm. Base setting up nicely!"

We toured up to the prayer flags, digging a couple of hand pits to look at the snowpack structure on Tyler's before bumping over the ridge to dig a full pit in Spanky's. We did not ski down into Bear Basin, but others had done so. We returned out through Exit Chute and back to the car. 

The snowpack remains thin (20-25 inches of mostly unconsolidated base) and there were plenty of rocks and stumps to hit, but coverage was better than I expected (and probably better than most of December 2023). The structure was looking pretty good for early season. There were a few crust/ facet layers on west aspects, but nothing out of the normal. In our pit at the top of Spanky's (NE Facing at 9200'), there was a 10 cm layer of 4F facets at the base of the snowpack and some evidence of faceting throughout the older snow. However, the overall outlook is good for now. ECTN 14 at 41 cm and ECTN 19 and 21 at 19 cm. 

Primary concerns were the shallow snowpack (we traveled downhill very slowly) and wind slabs. On the drive toward Gallatin Canyon this morning, we saw large plumes of snow blowing off the high peaks. We didn't see evidence of recent wind transport on our tour, but I'd be watching out for it. 

Tons of wind transport all over Hyalite. Gullies were spindrift torrents most of the day. Ridge lines had plumes for most of the day too. Small wind slabs building in the upper Mummy gully, approximately 6"-8" thick at most and 1F to P hardness. Some localized cracking around our boots but nothing more.

Flew from Paradise Valley to Cody and saw large plumes of our snowpack moving off of the peaks and getting transported from strong winds which were more southerly in the western part of the range and westerly around Cooke. Evidence of heavy cross loading across Sheep mountain (pictures) and the whole range, I didn’t see any evidence of avalanche activity. 

Skinned up to the top of the Pierre's Knob lift and then up the Finger's Meadow, poking into top of the 1st Finger. Total snow depth was around a foot, or a little less, in the base area. Near our high point at ~7900ft, snow depths were around 18" to two feet. A snowpit on a north aspect in the top of the 1st Finger showed a "right-side-up" snowpack, with the softest snow at the surface, getting progressively harder are you go down. ECTX. A little bit of faceting was visible in the older snow, but it hadn't done much weakening. A quick hand pit on an east aspect in the Finger's Meadow showed a similar snowpack structure. Plenty of snow to trigger a slide, but still a very thin snowpack with buried rocks remaining a huge hazard.

No avalanches or other signs of instability observed. Snowed lightly but consistently all morning, with an additional inch accumulating by the time we returned to the car.

Toured up to Blackmore NE Ridge, about 200 feet from the summit Tuesday. Mix of sun and clouds. very cold, light to no winds. fresh blown snow was over 1' deep up high and felt very stable. We did not notice any wind slabs though it had been windy overnight, the N.W face of elephant was completely scoured almost down to rock. Some small cornices forming on the ridge with the slightest wind skin in some places. snowpack was around 3' deep on the lee (E) side.

Two obvious layers. sun crust layer with a foot of wind blown on top. top layer failed while isolating column for pit test. photos are from a video that i cannot attach. it just shows the two layers. i tried to preform the test to the left but it failed prior to any taps. 

From IG: “(Photos) From a slide on the south side of October bowl today“

Dug a snow pit on a northern aspect at Bridger Bowl around 7800ft of elevation. Snow depth ranged from 45-50cm. Had a very reactive CT 2 on the most recent snow layer around 25cm deep in the snow measured from the ground up. Attempted a hasty ECT before we lost sunlight but did not get propagation. There was visible wind loading on upper elevations as well.

I skied all three meadows at History Rock this morning. The recent storms have done good things, and there is no longer a mix of snow and dirt, but around 3-9 inches of new snow in Hyalite. Winds were surprisingly light, mostly of of the south, and snowfall fluctuated between light and moderate, with a total of 2-3 inches of new snow on my car after several hours of skiing (it was good). The new snow didn't seem to be bonding great to the underlying crust, but I saw no bullseye signs of instability.