Natural avalanches were seen south of Cooke City, and many of the crowns have been filled in by recent wind. These likely happened last week during or near the end of the storm on 01/10. Photo: B. Fredlund
Natural avalanches were seen south of Cooke City, and many of the crowns have been filled in by recent wind. These likely happened last week during or near the end of the storm on 01/10. Photo: B. Fredlund
Natural avalanches were seen south of Cooke City, and many of the crowns have been filled in by recent wind. These likely happened last week during or near the end of the storm on 01/10. Photo: B. Fredlund
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).
Riders near Lionhead triggered a small avalanche while descending a steep rollover. The rider was 20' away from where the avalanche happened.
Riders in Lionhead triggered a small avalanche 20' away while "cutting down a hill". Photo: J. Anderson
A small crown on an east facing that has been filled in by wind in Lionhead. Photo: Z. Moser
I was cutting down a hill and this slide broke loose around 20 feet away, no one was hurt I’ll attach screenshots of where we were on maps and a picture of the minor slide.
