Northern Gallatin

Photo from IG, slide occurred night of 3/1.

The sky’s broke for about three minutes today and I was able to get a look at the back north facing wall in the divide basin up the main fork of hyalite and it finally shed some of its layers.

the slide propagated the length between the two peaks in the photo 

While on a walk up the main fork of hyalite today I noticed a slide on the west side of the drainage south of the maid of the mist 

From email: "CT13 broke on depth hoar. 

ECT15 broke as pictured below. " 

Skied the meadows northeast of Blackmore today. Saw numerous loose dry slides on the way up. Didn't see any wind slabs. No whumphs or shooting cracks. SW wind was pretty strong most of the morning. HS 240cm!

Two obs - two days ago I was poking around Mosier Creek drainage.  Weird thing was that there was no wind impact - no drifts and snow was still on all the trees.  Other than that, super weak snowpack with lots of collapsing.  In fact at the lower elevations, snow pack was ~24" deep and my dog was breaking through all the way to the ground (she is about 60#)

This morning I was up in Bear Canyon - only about half the snow (4") as on the south side of town by SMS.  Pretty bullet proof layer under the new snow, but it seems it came in wet enough that it adhered well.  It wasn't even sluffing off at the break over points.  Snow was not done at that measurement as it was still dumping when I left around 6:30.

Climbing near the Silken Falls / Dribbles areas from 11:00 to 17:00, we observed strong winds throughout the day. HN was 7-12cm on valley floors, and as we passed the Dribbles on the approach we noted a 20-25cm stiff wind deposit near the base of the buttress was that 1F- in firmness.

Wind transport was intense throughout the day both in areas we traveled and visible plumes at alpine ridgelines with the amount of fresh snow available for transport —a photo will not do the experience justice. Due to the protected nature of the climbs we were on, it was hard to tell which direction winds were blowing from. We observed 15 to 45cm of snow in the gullies we traveled (N & NW facing, ~7600-8600'), with the average HS being 20cm. While there was limited wind stiffening at the surface of much of the snow in these gullies, wind slabs were not present in the areas we traveled. We did not travel to the very top of any gully system, so I cannot speak at length to the hazard at the upper reaches of this wall.

Looking out towards Divide Peak and the Divide Cirque at the end of the day, we noted 3 fresh crowns that were not present in the morning. These were D1 to D1.5 in size, breaking along the base of cliffs, and appeared to be wind slab avalanches from a brief peek through some glass. There was a lot of small loose dry activity that we observed across canyon at middle to upper elevations as you would expect with strong winds and fresh snow. All activity was in line with what one would expect given the forecast and weather inputs.