Cooke City

From email: "Northerly facing terrain harbors October snow, which has faceted. It is holding up plenty of dense snow and wind slab from the quite snowy and windy November. It was unable to hold the additional weight of a human trigger, and two pockets failed at the ground, which produced avalanches. Crown height maxed at 2’. Notably, where it did not avalanche, the failure propagated hundreds of feet down the ridge. It is a good data point- northerly aspects near tree line have potential instability."

Performed Stability test on Henderson Mountain today. Elevation 9600', SW facing slope. HS 85cm, New Snow 20cm. Of Note, 1mm Rounding/Moist Facets at ground with 1CM Melt Freeze Crust 60cm from surface. 1mm Facets on either side of MFcr. ECTN 6 at new/old snow interface and ECTN25 on MFcr 60cm down. Generally pretty good looking snowpack for November 24. No collapsing or cracking of the snowpack and no recent avalanche activity observed.

Localized collapsing and cracking yesterday on the upper slopes of Mt. Henderson, SW aspects.  HS ranged from about 30-75cms.  

Snowpit attached from a SW aspect about 9700', HS 50cms, ECTN9 @ 22cms (1-2mm facets above MF crust).

View looking south towards the Pyramid. Photo: J. Negri

Photo: J. Negri

Evidence of cross loading on Sheep Mountain. Photo: J. Negri

Flew from Paradise Valley to Cody and saw large plumes of our snowpack moving off of the peaks and getting transported from strong winds which were more southerly in the western part of the range and westerly around Cooke. Evidence of heavy cross loading across Sheep mountain (pictures) and the whole range, I didn’t see any evidence of avalanche activity.