Lionhead Range

From email: "I dug a pit in the normal location to check the snow pack conditions and here’s what I found.
Aspect: East
Slope Angle: 19
Elevation: 8100ft
Total pit depth 70cm
Winds: light 5mph with gusts up to approximately 15mph. I wasn’t on the very top of the ridge so I was a little protected.
ECTP 22 The failure was right at the old snow and new snow line 27cm up from the ground.

The snow coverage of the parking lot, trail up and off trail areas wasn’t great, but I’ve seen worse."

From IG on 12/10: "2 slides we triggered remotely in tepee yesterday"

The snowpack at low elevations is thin (<1 foot). Off-trail riding looked questionable, and we let the sleds stay in one piece for another day or two. We went a  cornice line at 9000.’ We walked over to our pit site on a NE facing slope, triggered a large collapse, and got an ECTP13 in a snowpack that resembled what Dave saw at Lionhead and Ian and Alex saw in Cooke City. There was 8” of new snow with 1” of SWE with a total snow height of just over 105cm.

Across the way, we dug on a SW-facing slope and found a similar snowpack structure although there were a few more ice crusts mixed into the 90cm deep snowpack (ECTP14).

We rode up a bit farther to get a view of the Jefferson Bowl and saw one, small natural avalanche that occurred within the storm snow.

There was no real way to navigate avalanche terrain without rolling the dice with the persistent weak layer that makes up the foundation of the snowpack. Avoidance is key.

Was splitboarding up near lions head ridge today. Made some bad decisions and kicked off a good slide in a NE facing chute. Was with 2 buddies, 1 of which skied the line 3 weeks ago.  Underneath about a foot of new powder snow there was a firm crust that seemed like it was old  hard windslab in the gut of the chute, and I think a sun crust on the riders left side(East aspect). We had 2 spots where we were planning to re group at, first was a small cubby area right before a slight rollover about 75 ft from the top. I dropped first, made some turns down toward the pulloff, as I pulled in, I triggered a good size slab that propagated maybe 40-50 ft across, at the rollover as I carved into the pulloff.  Pulled  all snow  out of the chute down to the ground. Seemed to have failed on sugary facets on ground/ice crust close to the ground...