Northern Gallatin

From obs (3/6/22): " Skinned out to Alex Lowe peak today. Dug a pit on a northeast aspect below the east face of the peak. Got an ECTP 24 to break around 20 cm down. The slab was a knife hard sun/wind crust. Continued up avoiding areas where we noticed that bullet hard crust under the surface. On our decent we skied off the east ridge below the summit and on a skit cut got some shooting cracks, and a small wind slap to propagate but not slide. Skied the rest of the way down and didn’t notice anything else." Photo: S. Lipsteuer

Skinned out to Alex Lowe peak today. Dug a pit on a northeast aspect below the east face of the peak. Got an ECTP 24 to break around 20 cm down. The slab was a knife hard sun/wind crust. Continued up avoiding areas where we noticed that bullet hard crust under the surface. On our decent we skied off the east ridge below the summit and on a skit cut got some shooting cracks, and a small wind slap to propagate but not slide. Skied the rest of the way down and didn’t notice anything else.

Some spots of dry loose activity on east facing slopes where the melt freeze crust was bullet proof. Higher in the basin the crust wasn't as thick but still supported our weight. No propagation in our tests. ECTN 13 15cm below surface with 10cm of new snow and Q3 shear quality on shovel shear test and compression test. Skied fat maid 

Other than that lots of old activity from wet loose and one broken cornice from Arden Peak.

Witnessed a small (R1-D2) naturally released wet loose slide above Silken Falls (8000’, W) at approximately 1:15pm on 3/3/21. Video below. 
 

Upon returning to the Grotto Falls Lot (6900’) at ~3pm we witnessed two more small but powerful naturally triggered wet loose slides near Black Magic (E aspect) and to looker’s right. 

Our group skied into the basin to the north of The Mummy in Hyalite on Saturday. Through the cliffs and bottom gully of the basin we noted stable cold snow with natural sluff coming from cliff faces and trees above us seeing warm sun for the first time in the week. At the bottom of the couloir we got an ECTX with total snow depth of 210cm. With a couple extra hard whacks with two fists after the test I did manage to get it to propagate @114cm. We performed a two different PST's in the upper snowpack at density changes and got PST 78/100 (End) @145cm and PST 67/100 (Arr) @ 166cm.

As we climbed the couloir a wind slab developed which eventually caused us to turn back at just over 9,000'. The wind slab was present on pretty much all aspects and edges of the couloir. Let me know if you have any other questions.