Island Park Obs

We rode around the north and south sides of Mt Jefferson, and Yale Creek. The danger has definitely dropped and the snowpack has stabilized a lot since I was last here on New Year's Eve when we experienced big thunderous collapses. The peak instability was around the first week of January. We could see evidence of just a few slides from that time. All the snowfall during that time made conditions dangerous then....but stable now. Since Xmas eve, this area has received snow containing 4.5-6.5 inche of water.

Today we didn't see any recent avalanches. We didn't experience any collapsing or cracking. We had stubborn stability tests with columns that took a lot of hard hits to break even where the snowpack was thinner.

I'm not ready to climb up steep chutes on Jefferson, but I'm feeling really comfortable in many other areas - especially places with a 5-6 ft deep snowpack.

Winds were moving a little snow. One wind slab/drift produced a shooting crack but we couldn't get any others to crack.