Photos

From obs: "Here are a few snaps from yesterday (5/2/20), looking into the Absaroka from up on Emigrant. Fair bit of smaller, pockety wet slab activity in steep, rocky terrain near the middle/upper transition. I didn't see anything larger than D2 or any activity in true upper elevation terrain." Photo: B. VandenBos

From obs: "Here are a few snaps from yesterday (5/2/20), looking into the Absaroka from up on Emigrant. Fair bit of smaller, pockety wet slab activity in steep, rocky terrain near the middle/upper transition. I didn't see anything larger than D2 or any activity in true upper elevation terrain." Photo: B. VandenBos

From obs: "Here are a few snaps from yesterday (5/2/20), looking into the Absaroka from up on Emigrant. Fair bit of smaller, pockety wet slab activity in steep, rocky terrain near the middle/upper transition. I didn't see anything larger than D2 or any activity in true upper elevation terrain." Photo: B. VandenBos

From obs (5/3/20): "N facing gulley, probably similar results from the Pine Creek avalanche posted on 4/29. Avalanche appears to be natural and possibly a couple days old. Ran about 400’ wide in the cone and damned up the creek with massive cement-like debris. There were more similar avalanches on N facing aspects the more I traveled. The skinning was isothermic and sloppy as each step fell through the snowpack to the ground"

From obs (5/2/20): "Best guess: LW-U-D2-R2-O Multiple LW avalanche debris fields seen below Bridger Gully (IVO 3 Bears Traverse)" Photo: T. Cannan

From obs. (5/2/20): "Some recent wet slab avalanches were observed around Cooke City yesterday.  North and south aspects to mid elevations... not sure of the exact timing, but attached is a photo of one, a southerly aspect around 9,000'." Photo: B. Fredlund

From obs (5/2/20): "Wet slab avalanche possibly triggered by wet loose/ point release from above in the cliffs. Adjacent to “The Gem”. The crown looked to be about 2-2.5’ deep." Photo: N. Sheil

From e-mail (5/1/20): "...the mountains are coming unglued with the 4 nights of no freeze and heavy rain.  My party ventured up pine creek to take a look and found this big one that ran either yesterday or last night. 

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From obs (4/26/20): "....a wet slide from a n-ne couloir up mission creek near elephant head in the absarokas between 10-11:30 this morning. Snow did not freeze over last night and was heavily saturated early this morning before the sun rose." Photo: @laura_delray

"Skied up a BB this morning [4/25/20] and noticed the glide crack below the north end of Bridger Gully is opening up." Photo: M. Lavery

Wet slide at Bridger Bowl on Wednesday, 4/22/2020. Photo: K. O'leary

From obs (4/22/2020): "Early this morning we ascended near peak 10467 between Beehive and Bear Basin and skied a line off the south-east ridge. We noticed an old wet slide (a day or so) at the exit of the couloir we skied, and many more slides, point releases and large pinwheels off of south-east aspects of peak 10467 and on the saddle between peak 10467 and 10390. These all appeared to be from yesterday or the day before yesterday. On the north-east aspects there was an approximately 6" wind crust on top of a relatively isothermic upper layer (did not dig deep enough to see if it was isothermic throughout) that started melting rapidly once the sun hit it."

Photo: L. Ippolito

All surfaces except the upper North faces were getting wet and sticky. We observed lots of wet loose avalanches actively happening on SE-E facing slopes. We found some cold buffy snow on north-facing slopes, not amazing skiing. There was one small crown on a steep East facing slope that looked to be from the most recent storm but everything else was loose wet. Small wind slabs from the last snow seemed to be glued down today. Photo: S. Jonas

From IG obs (4/19/20): "Saw quite a few natural wet slides back in Middle Basin over the past two days, April 17-18. Witnessed several break loose naturally after about 2pm on anything from SW to SE slopes." Photo: @joshpelczar

From obs.: "This slide appeared to have happened a few days prior to when we observed it on the 16th. When we skied the skiable terrain at Dudley Creek the snowpack was stable, though snow coverage was thin." Photo: A. Pessl

Fresh drifts broke naturally along the ridgeline which became long running wet slides. 4/17/20. Photo: GNFAC

Fresh drifts broke naturally along the ridgeline which became long running wet slides. 4/17/20. Photo: GNFAC

Pinwheels of snow indicate the surface is wet and losing strength. These were observed at Bridger on 4/17/20, caused by a skier crossing above. Photo: A. Crawford

From obs.(4/17/20): "Today while skiing at the Playground in the Bridgers my party triggered a wet slab on an ESE 33 degree slope at 7,700' (HS-ASu-R1-D1-I). No one was caught or injured. We decided to turn around as the sun was roasting the snow at 11:45 a.m., and picked a low angle slope to ski back to the trail. Skier 2 descended and popped out a slab about 10" thick and 50' wide, but the slide was slow moving at first and he was able to ski away. The slide gained momentum pretty quickly and ran powerfully about 250' down the slope." Photo: M. Talty