From obs: "Yesterday 12/10/2023 at 0900, my climbing partner and I observed a clear crown line that extended throughout much of the east/ north east aspect of the bowl on Elephant Mountain. "
From IG on 12/10: "2 slides we triggered remotely in tepee yesterday"
Collapsable snow on SE and NW aspects of the parks above the meadow.
ECTPV, PST-end
NNW, 7489'
We toured yesterday out of Cooke City up Sheep Creek using the standard Skin Track through the valley to a low ridge near Sunset Peak. In the valley on lower exposed slopes we heard large whumphs, and proceeded maintaining wide berth of overhead slopes. As we gained the ridge on a relatively isolated southern slope these signs were not as apparent, but the weak faceted layer was noticble as we could still push our ski poles all the way to the ground. The snow from a week ago is relatively cohesive now and didn't show much reactivity. There was only a couple of natural avalanches on the southern side of the valley observed, and several snowmobile tracks heading up steeper slopes which didn't show reactivity. We avoided slopes over 30 and followed avy travel protocal if the uphill slopes were suspect to be over 30.
Yesterday 12/10/2023 at 0900, my climbing partner and I observed a clear crown line extend that extended throughout much of the east/ north east aspect of the bowl on Elephant Mountain.
My partner and I were both surprised by the depth of the crown. The eastern most point of the crown (photo left) was the deepest.
We skied into Beehive Basin today and found unstable snow. The bottom half of the 1.5' snowpack is weak, sugary facets that collapsed with audible "whumpfs" as we toured up...
We skied into Beehive Basin today and found unstable snow. The bottom half of the 1.5' snowpack is weak, sugary facets that collapsed with audible "whumpfs" as we toured up. We dug at 8,700' on a SE aspect (a few hundred meters up valley of Tyler's slope) and the snowpit revealed a poor snow structure and instability. Even though some ranges have more snow, the set up is the same: weak, unstable snow underlying new snow. Avalanches, whumpfs and cracking are warning us to be careful throughout our entire forecast area.
Alex Marienthal found unstable snow in Beehive at 8,700' on a SE facing slope. Test scores were ECTP 12, 5, V. All breaks were on the large facets in the middle of the snowpack. We also had lots of whumpfs, which is the snow collapsing under our body weight, and a very bad sign.
