22-23

Photo: R. Malmstrom

From IG 12/3: It was natural. Happened last night or this morning. It hadn't slid when we left yesterday. We were first tracks in today, and there were no tracks above or below this slide. Crown at the peak was around 6'. Average 2-3' crown. 10' debris piles at least.

From IG 12/3: Hey guys, just getting back from Cooke. Confirming more of what you saw, lots of large natural avalanches up high. Most notable was this massive slide on fox, looks to have broke 2-6’ deep and over 1000’ wide. Couldn’t quite see the toe from our tour but it looked to have run over 1000’ vertical. Never have seen one so large on Fox… we stuck on sub 25° terrain which was hard to move in. Lots of whumphing but not much (if any) cracking...

Hey, me again! Totally misspelled propagation in my last ob. Please please feel free to edit it if you decide to share it. This is what I get doing this late at night! 

Thanks,

Haylee 

Toured up to Bacon Rind today and skied meadows off of the ridge. Noted many collapses and whumpfs in the snowpack as we ascended east aspects to the ridge. Looking toward Ernie Miller ridge, we noted an old crown in the main bowl just below the summit. It was on an E-NE aspect, 200 or more feet wide and looked to be filled in with new snow but was still visible. Looking east from the top of the ridge, we noted another crown on a west aspect that looked to be about 100' wide and deep. 

Dug a pit at 8700' on a W aspect. HS was 70cm. We got an ECTP12 45 cm up from the ground at the interface between wind packed snow and a layer of .5-1mm facets and mixed forms. That layer made up the bottom 45cm of the snowpack in that area. 

Dug another pit at 8800' on an E aspect. HS was 115cm. We got an ECTP 14 50cm up from the ground on that same interface as described above. The bottom 50cm of the snowpack looked to be facets and mixed forms. The upper 65cm in that area was a mixture of different layers of wind packed grains that ranged from F to 4F hardness. 

Coverage on the descent is adequate, similar if not better than any point midwinter last season. Under skis, the snow in the burn/forest feels unconsolidated and very sugary. 

We dug a pit on a W/WNW slope at around 9100 ft in the republic creek drainage. CT 18 and ECTN34 (ECTX then we hit it extra hard 4 more times) on the weak layer about 70 cm down. But overall snowpack was upright and it seemed to be settling down more than we thought. But then as we approached the ridge we triggered 5 separate large collapses ("Whumphs"), all on WSW/SW slopes (between 8700 and 9200 ft). Pole probes revealed a light crust about 12 inches down.