From Obs: "I skied into Maid of the Mist today, it looks like part of a cornice fell and it failed on a wind slab from last weekend’s snow. It did not step down to the depth hoar. Photo: S Reinsel
Dug a pit on a southwest facing slope at around 9500 feet. Found a top layer of new snow, few inches bonded ok. Main layer on facets 75 cm deep. ECTP26 took quite a bit of force to get it to release from the layer. Facets were harder than a couple weeks ago but still garbage snow on the ground. Numerous recent avalanches spotted in next drainage to the north. See pictures.
I skied into Maid of the Mist today, which is now pseudo-passable, for the adventurous. I got a better look at the avalanche I saw from Divide yesterday, and it looks like part of a cornice fell and it failed on an wind slab from last weekend’s snow. It did not step down to the depth hoar, which is encouraging.
We dug a pit at about 9600’ on a south aspect, and found 160 cm and got ECTX. I suspect other aspects would not give the same result, though, and am cautious to get very excited about this.
From skier in Hyalite on 1/23/21: "I observed a couple older (1-2 week) naturals on E/ESE aspects in the Divide basin, and newer (1-3 days) naturals on the NE side of Divide and an east aspect at the head of the Maid of the Mist basin."
From obs on 1/23/21: "I observed a couple older (1-2 week) naturals on E/ESE aspects in the Divide basin, and newer (1-3 days) naturals [shown in photo] on the NE side of Divide and an east aspect at the head of the Maid of the Mist basin." Photo: S. Reinsel
From obs on 1/23/21: "I observed a couple older (1-2 week) naturals on E/ESE aspects in the Divide basin, and newer (1-3 days) naturals [shown in photo] on the NE side of Divide and an east aspect at the head of the Maid of the Mist basin." Photo: S. Reinsel
I took a spin up to Divide today, and saw a mixed bag of conditions. A pit on a south aspect at 9300’ gave me HS 160 and ECTP29, failing on facets about 50cm from the ground. A couple spots in the upper pack failed in shear, but were unresponsive in a compression test, and when I pushed over my extended column, it stayed intact. But most of the nice things I have to say about the snow are qualitative observations, which have pretty limited value.
I observed a couple older (1-2 week) naturals on E/ESE aspects in the Divide basin, and newer (1-3 days) naturals on the NE side of Divide and an east aspect at the head of the Maid of the Mist basin. The older slides were noticeably larger than the newer ones, but my sample size was quite small, so I’m not sure what I can infer from that. Ski conditions today were excellent.
Small, loose snow avalanches on the east face of Mt Blackmore. Photo: B. Richards
