Natural cornice failure and small slab on Iceberg Peak’s NE face. We skied by the day prior and judging by what the wind did to our tracks overnight, this looked like it happened in the morning.
Dug a pit on our way up the west side of Henderson Mountain. Incline 26 degrees, elevation 9545. Surface depth at 165cm, dug down to about 65cm. Performed extended column test and yielded ECTN17 along melt freeze crust at 135cm above ground.
From email: "Had propagation on 1.5mm rounding facets below the mid-March, 1/2cm thick and knife hard MF crust. This location is always shallow and has a poor structure, but I was surprised to get propagation.
Further up valley on a west aspect, HS 130, 1 of 2 pits had ECTP28 on the basal facets. Pretty wild to still be getting propagation in mid April.
Winds were light out of the south, gusting to strong at ridgetops out of the west with active snow transport. No wet loose activity seen today, but several old wet loose avalanches on Climax from the last warm up. "
From obs: "It likely happened sometime between 10:30 and 1:30 today. It doesn’t look super deep, but it’s hard to say for sure. I’d guess around 2 feet deep."
A snowboarder saw this natural avalanche on the Fin from Cooke City. He estimated it happened between 10:30-1:30 and broke 2' deep. Photo: N. Mattes
Toured out into Lower Hayden today to look around. Lots of wet loose avalanches on all aspects by noon. And by the time I came back down the hill, the Fin had slid. It likely happened sometime between 10:30 and 1:30 today. It doesn’t look super deep, but it’s hard to say for sure. I’d guess around 2 feet deep.
We toured down the west side of the Bridger Range on the edge of Truman Gulch and found predictably weak snow on an upper-elevation NW-facing slope. Conditions were variable and transitioned to a thick crust as we moved on to a lower elevation, west-facing slope. By the time we came down the Ramp, the snow was getting wet, we saw roller balls, and we avoided steep, sun-exposed terrain.
We dug below NW Passage. It was a 135 cm deep snowpack, dry throughout, with Fist plus hard facets and depth hoar making up the foundation (ECTP30, PST 42/100 end at 30 cm from the ground.
