24-25

Triggered a small slide (r2 d2) in a north east facing chute at around 8300 ft. Photo: J Alford

From email: "Steve Harvey and I did a quick pit yesterday (12/16/2024) S. of Cooke in Republic Creek. E. aspect; 9.085'; 30° slope; HS 80 c; 12:30PM, Calm/cool (teens), Lt snow.

ECTN21; ECTP24 at 50 cm on buried facets. We declined to continue on slope.

We didn't perform a detailed profile, but generally, fist (new snow) and 4-finger above buried facets and progressively 2-finger to 1-finger below.

Noticeable Issues:

(1) Low and variable snowpack, 30cm or less under/near trees and on wind-scoured aspects and loading in fetch zones. Something to keep in mind as season progresses with  potential sweet spots in predictable places.

(2) Buried 50 cm facets/hoar that is essentially everywhere in Cooke City zone.

(3) We did not observe buried deep facets at the base of the snowpack."

Triggered a small slide (r2 d2) in a north east facing chute at around 8300 ft. The slide was triggered on a ski cut through a wind loaded drift and propagated about 15 or 20 ft wide. It about 6 in deep on the edges and two feet in the loaded area. We observed several other signs of instability throughout the day, most wind loaded terrain was touchy and easy to rip off with slabs anywhere from 6 in deep to two or three feet deep. All signs of instability originated from the interface between the new snow from the last few days and facets from the last high pressure system. 

Around 5" of fresh snow lay on top of the snowmobiles this morning in Cooke City. We rode up to Daisy Pass to visualize terrain and got eyes on Crown Butte. On the north side, we noted the crown of a wind slab avalanche (R1 D1) that broke during the storm cycle. We then rode back down and toured up Henderson Mountain along its SW flank. Skies cleared throughout the day and allowed for great visualization of terrain north of Cooke. We got eyes on Miller Ridge, Crown Butte, Henderson Bench, Scotch Bonnet and Sheep Mountain; we did not note any other avalanches outside of the small one up on Crown Butte. We saw extensive cross-loading in the bowl of Henderson Mountain and on Miller Ridge. 

We dug snowpits on SW and S aspects on Henderson. We noted buried facets a little over a foot deep on our pit on the SW and we got an unstable test result in our snowpit on the S aspect (ECTP 25) on a facet/melt freeze crust sandwich. 

Most notably, as we entered non wind-effected, upper-elevation terrain on Henderson, we consistently triggered many localized collapses and heard audible whumpfs, indicating persistent slab instability. 

Dug on a NE aspect on The Ramp at about 8500’. HS was around 100 cm but varied quite a bit. There’s a layer of very weak facets about 40cm down from the surface that are particularly concerning to me. The storm slab I observed yesterday is also still quite reactive, but the snowpack seems to still lack a significant slab on the aspects where I’ve been traveling. There was an abundant amount of cracking in the newer snow whenever traveling off a beaten path. In our pit, got results of CT3 SC and CT7 SC on the storm slab fracturing at the interface with sudden collapse character. The layer of facets farther down in the snowpack collapsed at CT10 SC. I also performed a PST on the weak layer of facets and the weak layer probated to end at 35/100 cm.