Northern Gallatin

From IG: Wet slide to the ground above Quake Lake. 

We skied two North-facing lines in the Northern Gallatin range on Wednesday ranging in elevation from 8500 - 9700 ft with some slight West and East flavor. We saw no signs of instability and set off a couple large sluffs in the top 8-12" of snow and some wind-loaded pockets breaking 6-8" deep. I dug a pit and did a CT and ECT and got CT15 on new snow 30cm deep and CT28 on a layer 45 cm deep. Got ECTN16 on same 30-35 cm deep new snow layer. The interface with the old freeze-thaw layer below the new snow did not show a very high quality fracture plane / bed surface for the upper new snow to slide on. the freeze-thaw layer was about 1-2cm thick but did not feel it while skiing. Upon pulling on ECT column with shovel, broke on 45-cm layer with poor quality and also on basal facet layer at ground. Overall right-side-up snowpack density going from fist to pencil hardness pretty linearly. Total depth of snow 210cm. Depth of new snow from last storm approx. 12-16". 9600 ft NNE aspect. 

Performed an ECT test high on the east face of Mt Ellis at 12:30 pm on 4/7/2024. Found 8” of medium density powder on a 3” ice crust with 2’ of lowish density slush beneath the crust. Got an ECTP 14 that broke at the ground. The ice crust seemed to hold the slope together well enough to support a skiers weight yesterday. Concerned that additional warming today could make this slope dangerous.

From IG message: “Rode the banana today.. lots of fast moving sluff. Had a mid elevation pocket pop. New snow seemed to have bonded well, the spot that did pop had formed into 12” slab below rock face.”

Roughly 2 inches of new snow in the parking lot at Bear Canyon.  Up high on the top of Mt Ellis at 8300 feet there was 6 to 8 inches.  Did a column test and it broke on the new snow layer above the crust about 23 cm down from the top at 3 taps from the elbow.  Then we kept going and got it to fail at the weak layer near the bottom of the snowpack at 6 taps from the shoulder.