Lionhead Range

From email: "My partner and I toured up to the ridgeline overlooking Hebgen this morning, and I wanted to share our observations. With the exception of some light north winds while walking across the lake, winds were exceptionally calm the remainder of the day.

We noticed a multitude of slides on north- and east-facing slopes, many of which seemed to have been from the prior weekend. I snapped a picture of one on the opposite side of the drainage that was a couple of feet deep. Adjacent to it was some more debris.

We experienced no cracking/collapsing the entire day, which was honestly quite shocking. Given the exceptionally weak snowpack and recent avalanches, we stuck to the ridgeline and followed our uptrack down. Great turns regardless. "

On 2/16/24 we saw a lot of old and recent avalanches that happened at various times over the last week, and in a wide variety of terrain. On lower elevation, generally non-wind-loaded terrain in the trees we saw at least 4 avalanches that were 1-2' deep and at least 100' wide. Near ridgelines there were many avalanches, harder slabs, at least 1-2' deep breaking hundreds of feet wide. Photo: GNFAC

On 2/16/24 we saw a lot of old and recent avalanches that happened at various times over the last week, and in a wide variety of terrain. On lower elevation, generally non-wind-loaded terrain in the trees we saw at least 4 avalanches that were 1-2' deep and at least 100' wide. Near ridgelines there were many avalanches, harder slabs, at least 1-2' deep breaking hundreds of feet wide. Photo: GNFAC

We saw a fresh avalanche in Watkins Creek that we think was triggered remotely during the day on 2/16 by a group that was riding in a flat meadow above, where we saw their tracks at least 150 feet away (photo). This slide was 2-3' deep and 100-150' feet wide, breaking on old sugary snow. HS-R3-D2-O. Photo: GNFAC

We rode up Denny Creek below Lionhead Ridge, then around to the north, through Watkins Creek and into the top of Targhee Creek. We saw a lot of old and recent avalanches that happened at various times over the last week, and in a wide variety of terrain. On lower elevation, generally non-wind-loaded terrain in the trees we saw at least 4 avalanches that were 2'+ deep and 100'+ wide. Near ridgelines there were many avalanches, harder slabs, 2'+ deep breaking hundreds of feet wide.

On our way out we saw a fresh avalanche in Watkins Creek that we think was triggered remotely during the day by a group that was riding in a flat meadow above, where we saw their tracks at least 150 feet away (photo). This slide was 2-3' deep and 100-150' feet wide, breaking on old sugary snow. HS-R3/4-D2-O. We rode along the flat terrain above the avalanche and could feel our sled tracks punch through the supportable slab into weak snow at the bottom of the snowpack.

We felt a couple collapses while sitting on our sleds, and saw a couple long shooting cracks while riding. We dug a snowpit in Targhee creek on a northwest facing slope at 9,435'. We had an ECTP27 below a 2.5' deep slab, sitting on 1.5' of weak sugary snow.

Skies were mostly sunny with a light breeze out of the north.