Heavy snow and strong winds during last week's storm pushed many slopes past their breaking point. This natural avalanche occurred on a NE facing slope outside of Cooke City. Photo: Beau Fredlund
The Bridger, southern Madison and southern Gallatin Ranges, the Lionhead area near West Yellowstone and the mountains around Cooke City:
It has now been a week since any measurable precipitation has fallen in southwest Montana. During this past week, warm and dry weather has helped last weekend's storm snow condense into a thick and supportable slab. This is making the snowpack less touchy, but stability assessment more difficult.
A buried layer of surface hoar and well developed facets near the ground are producing unstable results during stability tests. This photo was taken on Spanky's, a NE facing slope at 8500 ft in Bear Basin. Photo: GNFAC
These slides werer triggered by explosives during control work on Thusday. A weak snowpack structure in the Bridger Range is continuing to produce obvious signs of instability. Photo: Alex Marienthal
The Bridger, Madison and southern Gallatin Ranges, the Lionhead area near West Yellowstone and the mountains around Cooke City:
This recent avalanche occurred in the Taylor Fork drainage of the southern Madison Range. Snowmobilers dug a snowpit in this area on a SE facing slope at 9456ft and got low stabitlity test scores and all their ECT's propagated. ECTP3, CT6, and PST end 38/100. Photo: J. Miller
The snowpack in the Bridger Range has a slab of new snow resting on very weak facets. Despite recent warm weather, conditions remain unstable. It can take a very long time for facets and depth hoar to finally heal. Unfortunately it might take most of the season. Photo: GNFAC
