Cooke City

Today, we rode north of Cooke City through Abundance Basin around Scotch Bonnet ending at the East Henderson bench. We found anywhere from 4-12" of new snow that fell in the last 24-48 hours. Strong winds have transported this new snow into thick drifts even in more sheltered terrain. We did not see any recent notable avalanches but saw many crowns and debris piles from two weeks ago. 
On the East Henderson bench, we dug a snowpit and found 235cm (almost 8') of snow. We found moist faceted snow 6' below the surface near the bottom of the snowpack. At the top of our snowpit was 12" of new snow above a stiff crust. Our stability test showed ECTN15 results on this interface. 

Snow continued off and on through the day with little to no accumulation. Many slopes had signs of either wind-loading or had been scoured by recent wind resulting in thinner areas. 

Spent the last few days traveling around the Cooke City Area.  New to the area so this is just some general notes/obs of things we saw that seemed interesting:

• weak basal facets/depth hoar widespread across all aspects and elevations travelled
• no cracking or collapsing noted 
• anywhere from 1-5" of new snow in the last few days. Surface conditions quite a mixed bag and tricky to predict what would be crusted or not I think due to how the sun has popped out at random times and locations in between snow squalls. 
• pits were dug in 2 locations (see images) -
  • S aspect on Henderson, many clean CT (Q1/SC) results and ECTP results on both a mid pack facets and basal depth hoar, even though depth hoar was wet (could make a snowball). These test results were repeatable in 2 pits dug nearby each other in same location representing both shallow (~160cm) and deep (~200cm) spots. Video of this pit linked. 
  • W Aspect Republic Crk/Woody Ridge - same basal facets/depth hoar noted, but not reactive to ECT (ECTX result), even when top half of snowpack was removed.  This is near the collapse ob from another party the other day so points to the spatial variability - no result in our pit but a reactive collapse nearby from another party noted. 
• Widespread crowns visible from previous cycle almost everywhere you could imagine, especially on easterly aspects. Don't think we saw anything that hadn't been reported, but must have been a very impressive cycle. One photo attached is of a shallow SE aspect slide seen in Pilot Crk drainage. I thought interesting because of how shallow the snowpack seemed there. 

Skiers triggered this small windslab while skinning near a steeprollover at the top of an East facing slope above Zimmer Creek. Crown was ~20 ft wide and ran a similar distance. 2"-10" at the deepest. Photo: G. Roe

Triggered this small windslab while skinning near a steeprollover at the top of an East facing slope above Zimmer Creek. Crown was ~20 ft wide and ran a similar distance. 2"-10" at the deepest. 

Skiers south of Cooke City saw a recent likely cornice-triggered avalanche on a northeast face. During their tour, they saw a small part of the same cornice fall off and trigger another small avalanche. Photo: B. Daley