200ft wide and rather shallow, did not manage to run fully into the apron.
Toured up the ramp and north towards hourglass couloir right after heavy snowfall at Bridger. Observed presumably natural wind slab avalanche crown at top of Hourglass (picture). Broke roughly 200ft wide and rather shallow, did not manage to run fully into the apron. Also noted many other small natural avalanches almost all breaking right at the top of the ridge. Strong winds from west loading slopes. Followed some solo tracks down just skiers left of hourglass, noted some instability but no major propagation or slides while skiing. Storm slab not quite cohesive this evening, but could definitely see it getting pretty spooky tomorrow.
Skied south of Cooke today. Winds were strong with frequent gusts to extreme out of the S. 3cm of new between 1530 and 1700. No cr, co and the wind slab produced moderate, non-planar results in hand pits. Limited vis and no avalanches observed.
After skiing Bradley's Meadow, we skied north into Wolverine Bowl aiming to go up the backside of Texas Meadows. When we were in the large flat meadow to the north of Hourglass Chute we heard two avalanches come down from the ridge a few hundred yards north of Hourglass. Too low of vis to estimate size or see anything but the powder clouds come over the bottom cliffs.
Skied big Ellis this morning. The temperature inversion was still active but not as dramatic as yesterday. The snow in the warm zone, near the top, of the inversion was well bonded and clearly affected by warmer temps. It was snowing hard up there but coming down as graupel. In the cold zone of the inversion the new snow was extremely active. We were remote triggering every small slope we passed on the gully exit. We saw many naturals breaking on any large open slope in the gully. The snow on the cold side of the inversion was blower but not bonding well at all. Could be a very sketchy setup if you find your self skiing in avy terrain that stayed cold over the last few days.
This was a small remote trigger next to the skin track, about 20 feet wide by 10 feet long. Photo: K Gordon
New storm snow accumulating over the course of the morning became quite reactive once we descended out of the inversion. Significant change starting around 7,200', where the surface had remained cold. We didn't observe any signs of instability while skiing between ~8,200' and ~7,200'.
Photo is a of remote trigger, SE facing slope, ~100' crown, ~3" depth. Lots of shooting cracks and smaller remote triggers while touring out the FS roads.
Remote trigger, SE facing slope, ~100' crown, ~3" depth. Photo: M Gillies
While skiing at Lewis and Clark yesterday, I triggered a small wind slab (roughly 2ft rectangle) while traversing into the run with no propagation. While we skied the run, there was some pretty heavy sluffing. Much of the surface was wind-affected, with a dense top layer that broke through to a weaker, less dense layer.
Had several large whumphs in windslabs at the top of bacon rind today. Interestingly they only started once a few inches of new snow had accumulated from the cold front. At the end of the day the windslabs are out there with enough load to make them pretty touchy.
No obvious signs of instability where there was no wind loading.
