While snowmobiling up Little Bear we witnessed this natural avalanche. There was 2-3' of new snow.
There were numerous debris piles, point releases, and crowns on the north face of Elephant and the northeast face of Blackmore this morning. Most of them appeared to have run during the storm (1/27) and had been covered by at least 6 inches of new snow.
A skier triggered a slide about 20-30 yards wide and 2-4ft thick.
A skier triggered an avalanche about 20-30 yards wide and 2-4ft thick.
Skied from the summit of both Palace Butte and Maid of the Mist. Based on seeing no signs of snow instability and good terrain selection we had a grand day in the mountains. There was approximately 25 cms of new, dense snow. The SW Montana faceted snow at the ground resides every where we skied and snow above this layer is obviously well bonded.
My ski partners and I toured up Flanders creek today and found 9"- 11" of new low density snow. We dug a pit at the base of the SE bowl of Flanders at 9500 ft. The snowpack was 90 cm deep, slightly shallower than what we found on Divide peak last weekend. We found that the new snow was sherring easily in hand pits and we got an ECTP 6 on this interface in our pit. The layers beneath the new snow were faceted junk but not reactive in our tests. The new snow sitting on a firm crust layer was our main concern.
An ice climber across the valley observed a large natural avalanche running over Silken Falls ice climb on the east side of the Main Fork. Wind was blowing and moving snow all day. This gully gets wind-loaded and was the site of a fatal avalanche in 2009.
