Northern Gallatin

Iv been fortunate enough to spend the past three days skiing around hyalite. On Monday, we were skiing a low angle gully a mile NE of Backmore along the ridge. We noticed new snow point and releases on most steep aspects above 40 degrees, no signs of new snow stuff stepping down. Today while on the East Fork ridge south of Palisades mountain, I covered SE-NW aspects and the new snow seemed well bonded. Solar aspects from the high pressure last week had an obvious crust layer, but new snow seemed bonded. On shadier aspects, I felt facets below new snow but no obvious signs of instability.. yet. 

Skied up through Maid of the Mist Basin into Twin Falls Basin, attempted to boot up the Pinner but was foiled by too much snow. Very strong (almost blew one of my skis away) wind on ridge lines transporting significant amounts of snow. Despite this snow seemed very stable, small wind/storm slab not very consolidated breaking, but not propagating. Skied all sorts of aspects and all angles and saw few signs of instability. Day before friend observed 6-8ft shooting cracks when walking across >30 degree north-eastern aspects near try line, will try to get him to submit video, skied same slope and was unable to replicate a day later. Absurdly deep conditions high up in Hyalite, some of the better turns of my life, hopeful the storm bonds well with previous snow.

Snowpit on the Mt Blackmore 

Photo: GNFAC

Summited Mt. Blackmore 12/10. High wind and heavy wind loading were found, but minimal signs of instability were found within the wind-loaded areas. Some localized cracking and collapsing were observed throughout the boot pack but had minimal propagation. Before the climb, we performed an ECT on a wind loaded slope and found inconclusive results with ECTX. 

We toured up to Mt Blackmore today to assess how the snowpack is reacting to the recent snowfall. We traveled into the bowl and up the SE face to the ridge. Strong winds were noted off of ridgetops, as well as at lower elevations, before popping out into the bowl. But the SE face below the ridge was remarkably less wind effected than we expected.

The good news: Hyalite was the clear winner from our last storm cycle, and we noted around 15 inches of new snow at 9700'. The bad news: in our snowpit, we got an unstable test result of ECTP 13 on a crust - facet sandwich below the new snow. Unfortunately, the snow that makes up the base of our snowpack is made up of several old crusts and facets.

Where we traveled, we did not note much wind slab formation. Beyond our unstable test result, we did not note any other signs of instability - no recent avalanches or cracking/collapsing beneath our skis. 

Light winds below treeline had little to effect on the snow in the history rock meadows. It was clearly blowing up high, with exposed nw faces stripped of snow and active transport visible off of Blackmore. Photo: W Hubbard 

Light winds below treeline had little to effect on the snow in the history rock meadows. It was clearly blowing up high, with exposed nw faces stripped of snow and active transport visible off of Blackmore.