Northern Gallatin

Fool-heartedly, I decided to attempt to ski Maid of the Mist today after experiencing false hope about the snow depth from my meander up Flander Basin yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the snowpack was horrible, very variable and faceted, and some of the worst skinning I've done in a long time. However, the snow stability was even worse than the skinning. At approximately 8600", east of Maid of the Mist Creek, I started skinning from the tree edge slightly into the north-east facing meadow. Immediately after leaving tree-line, I heard a large "whump" and noticed a faint crack that shot far into the meadow (I could only see it for 20-30 feet it was so faint, and did not show up in my photo, but it is likely it went farther from how loud the collapse was). We decided to turn around there and carefully re-traced our tracks back into the safety of the dense forest and descend back to our cars that route. As an additional note about the snow, anything solar was unseasonably hot and sticky. It appeared that a notable thermal crust could develop after today's warm temperatures.

Yesterday I toured up Flanders Peak via Flanders Creek Basin. In an exploratory gesture, I ascended via the East ridge. At approximately 9300" we dug a pit since we were setting through very variable conditions. Much of the snow was unconsolidated sugary facets all the way to the ground (approximately 95cm) underneath the new snow and we were sinking straight through to the ground as we set. However, anything slightly east south-east facing developed a nasty sun crust that was strong enough to support our weight. This was the layer we were concerned about, and while we could not get it to propagate (ETCN) in our tests, it's location (sandwiched between the new snow and the deep sugary facet base) raised some red flags for us in the future about how it would react to a heavier load piles on top of that crust. We did not ski that aspect. Instead, we skied the south-east bowl but stuck to the east aspect of the bowl. The aspect we skied in the bowl did not have that same sun crust. However, we noticed significant wind-loading the top 20 feet of the entire ridge-line and several small cornice collapses off the eastern side of the ridge. There was a significant wind crust as well (approximately 10cm), which makes sense with how windy it has been this past week. Once again, I'm sorry I have no photos to include. My phone dies in the wind.

Crown of a skier triggered avalanche on the Football Field, out of bounds south of Bridger Bowl, on 12/25/2020.

Crown of a skier triggered avalanche on the Football Field, out of bounds south of Bridger Bowl, on 12/25/2020.

Large natural avalanche on an east face in the Divide Cirque. I suspect it failed during the storm on the 22nd as the crown and flanks were obscured. Photo: GNFAC

Snowpit from the slope where we triggered a whump in Divide Cirque

My partner and I did not skin all the way out to Mt Blackmore, instead we kept it very mellow and stuck to the ridge line east of Blackmore Creek between the hidden lake and Hyalite reservoir. The reason we kept to mellow terrain is because there is close to no snow out in this area. The snow throughout the day will certainly help out in future tours, we saw the flakes falling from the sky for the entirety of our 2.5 hours out in the woods! Stellar dendrites all over the place! Overall, in the dense forested areas there was minimal snow coverage and a whole lot of exposed rocks and logs, not even enough snow to slide. The isolated areas where there was a clearing of trees the snow was considerably deeper, sometimes up to the middle of our calves.

The new snow we saw ranged from 9-10cm in open areas to 4cm in sheltered areas. Underneath the new snow was a crust layer from the last storm that was easily punched through to the basal facet layer. One pit was dug on a NE aspect at 7200' in sheltered trees, total snow depth was 30cm, with 9cm of fist soft new snow sitting on top of a 1cm 1F crust, and 20cm of 1.5mm-2.5mm facets going to the ground. One test resulted in ETCN11 with the failure occurring on the old crust layer. The bonding happening at that crust layer was looking pretty good as the early day snow was denser and had a higher water content. As the day went on the snow became lighter and less dense. Wind held steady all day at a constant rate of 10-15mph with gusts up to 20-25mph coming in from the west/southwest. We didn't end up skiing anything because of conditions, instead we skinned out along the hiking trails, a day in the woods is better than one at home. Hope this helps guys, thanks for all the work you do trying to keep everyone safe. Pray for snow!