20-21

We looked at the avalanche in Hyalite that was triggered on Saturday 1/9/21. The slope angle was 33-35 degrees on the starting zone of the lookers right path. It broke 2-3’ deep on weak facets below a hard slab, 1000’ wide and the debris was 5-9’ deep. East aspect, 9,800’ elevation. Photo: GNFAC

We looked at the avalanche in Hyalite that was triggered on Saturday 1/9/21. The slope angle was 33-35 degrees. It broke 2-3’ deep on weak facets below a hard slab, 1000’ wide and the debris was 5-9’ deep. East aspect, 9,800’ elevation. Photo: GNFAC

We looked at the avalanche in Hyalite that was triggered on Saturday 1/9/21. It broke 2-3’ deep on weak facets below a hard slab, 1000’ wide. East aspect, 9,800’ elevation. Photo: GNFAC

Skiers triggered this avalanche on Flanders Mountain on 1/9/21. It was triggered out of the photo to the right on a seperate slope around the corner. It propagated over 1000' wide, and 2-4' deep. Photo: GNFAC

Skiers triggered this avalanche on Flanders Mountain on 1/9/21. It was triggered out of the photo to the right on a separate slope around the corner. It propagated over 1000' wide, and 2-4' deep. Photo: GNFAC

ECTP 10, 15 cm slab breaking approximately 15 cm beneath new snow. East facing leeward slope. Approx 45.525, -110.952 elevation 7696. Surface hoar present on all slopes, approximately bottom 30 cm sugary facets.

The skin out to Beehive Basin is getting very defined so we followed the usual skin track up to the first "peak" just outside of the private property boundary. There were numerous tracks on the steeper west facing slopes and one natural point release slide near the top of that ridge. We dug a pit in Beehive Basin at 8600' on an E aspect on a 23 degree slope. We found 80cm of snow, the top of which was covered with 1-1.5cm surface hoar, below that was a defined slab of 44cm of snow consisting of fist then 4 finger hardness rounded grains. Under the slab sat a 0.5mm thick crust from the previous sunny period, from that point in the snow pack there was about 10cm of rounded grains followed by 26cm of the problematic facets. An ECT was performed and we got a ECTP21 with a Q2 fracture at the interface of the basal facet layer and the overlying rounded grains, the crust layer was not reactive. We kept the slope angle under 30 and found some pretty good turns on the way out of the basin.

The recent wind has stripped the snowpack bare in spots and created large drifts in others at the Throne. Photo: GNFAC