Avalanches S. of Cooke City Photos and Observations

Ski toured south of Cooke City today to try and take stock of the recent natural avalanche cycle.

Avalanches were observed on all aspects, except south.  A few photos attached.

Of note, many crowns have quickly disappeared, with additional wind loading.  Particularly from recent N, NW winds.

Still getting widespread collapsing and cracking, particularly above about 9300'.  

One collapse, in relatively wind sheltered terrain, photo attached, was wild in that the cracks shot away from me about 100' relatively slowly, and then circled back in a big loop!  About a 3 second symphony of movement in the snow.  

Higher in more wind exposed terrain, the collapses became spooky, with Pencil hard wind slab in places.  There the collapsing was much louder- and communicated the large mass of snow above that weak layer.  A couple of times they made me jump, and I am typically quite comfortable with whumpfing when I am in safe terrain.  It's just humbling when you feel the energy of a very large mass of snow move.

Good to give those hard wind slabs an extra wide margin though, because I've once seen a section of flat ridgeline avalanche into a connected steep slope (deep slab/ hard slab in the Wasatch, 20yrs ago).