Northern Gallatin

Toured into divide basin on Friday. Looking at the north face of hyalite peak we saw a slide that went to the ground, and was about 150 feet wide. It possible this slide propagated further, but severe wind loading was actively occurring and it was hard to tell if the crown had been filled back in. We dug a pit at 9300 feet on a SÉ aspect and found a 80-100 cm HS and right side up snow pack with minor faceting below a crust 30 cm from the bottom. 

This natural avalanche of wind blown snow narrowly missed hitting two skiers.

Photo: Anonymous

Toured into divide basin on Friday. Looking at the north face of hyalite peak we saw a slide that went to the ground, and was about 150 feet wide. It possible this slide propagated further, but severe wind loading was actively occurring and it was hard to tell if the crown had been filled back in. We dug a pit at 9300 feet on a SÉ aspect and found a 80-100 cm HS and right side up snow pack with minor faceting below a crust 30 cm from the bottom. 

My partner and I were skinning up a west-facing slope in Beehive Basin when we stopped out of the wind at a large rock outcrop.

Shortly after stopping to re-assess, a small, wind-deposited, pocket of snow popped off the rock face above us triggering a soft-slab slide which gained momentum and stepped down through a rocky choke, fanning out in the open face below the rocks, before coming to a stop directly at our skis. 

We witnessed no additional natural avalanches that day or found any significant instabilities in the snowpack on adjacent slopes. We can only attribute our near-miss to luck, if the avalanche had occured five minutes before we stopped (while skinning across the slope), or five minutes after (while continuing upslope to our desired objective), our day might have ended quite differently. 

18-24” new snow at Lick Creek area

Not much wind. Cold

No instability noted

Supportable base (unlike usual for this time of year)

I have been cruising around Hyalite climbing a good deal the last week, and have gotten some good looks up high as well. As you have probably observed as well, things are well set up for this time of year. Snow depths are 50-100cm, right side up, and there has not been much wind transport. Although there has been a good deal of waist deep trail breaking, it's due to there being a lot of new snow, not facet wallowing! Gully features lack a slab, and we have not observed any signs of instability in either Flanders or the Main Fork. There has been a fairly constant trickle of new precip up there, and surface conditions have consistently been precip particles and DFs, although we have occasionally observed surface hoar below treeline. Sam

First tour out in Hyalite today and thought I'd share some quick data I gathered from the Lick Creek saddle.

50-60cm of snow out there with hardly any wind effect on it. 

The quick pit I dug was:

0-25cm F 1-1.5mm faceting rounds

25-27 1F solar crust (easily broken)

27-43 4F 1mm rounds

43-55 F new snow

Cheers!

From obs: "We observed lots of well developed surface hoar on Chestnut Mountain on top of approximately 12” - 15” of snow."