23-24

Like much of the advisory area, the snowpack in the Bridger Range remains thin. Photo: GNFAC

The road into the Throne was marginally snow-covered. It was good enough to get in on sleds without them overheating, but it may not make it long with above-freezing temperatures. We toured up the shoulder to the north-facing run off the top, digging four pits along the way. We experienced no collapsing or obvious signs of instability deeper than superficial cracking. We found 10-24" of snow on the ground. In many of the thinner areas, the entire snowpack consisted of facets.

We focused on finding areas with a cohesive slab over the facets as our primary concern. We had unstable results in the pit in which we found this recipe (ECTP12), but feeling that there was a lack of connectivity in the slab, we proceeded. In our other pits, we had ECTNs and ECTXs because the entire snowpack consisted of facets. 

Yesterday I dug a pit just for fun on the backside of Bradley's (7800 ft, NW asp). I found about 30cm of mixed forms (facets, rounds, and grains in-between) overlying 5cm of facets (2-3mm), over a 15cm thick melt-freeze-crust/facet complex. Some of the facets were starting to look like depth hoar.

I got a non-propagating result (ECTN22 down 30cm on the facet layer), followed by a propagating result (ECTP23 down 30cm on the facet layer) in the same pit. This was a good reminder about spatial variability even on a small scale.

Pole probing around the area there were places I could feel the facet layer, and places where the lowermost part of the snowpack felt more like a solid crust. This pattern seemed aspect dependent (crust-dominant on steeper solar-ish aspects, facets in shaded areas or north aspects), but I didn't poke around enough to know for sure. 

From email: "Just sharing a photo I took of some large surface hoar.  This was taken up in carrot basin in a spot that was especially bad, in the shadows sheltered by trees but adjacent to warmer sunny spot.  It didn’t look like this everywhere but it certainly was a common sight." Photo: J. Abate

From email: "Just sharing a photo I took of some large surface hoar.  This was taken up in carrot basin in a spot that was especially bad, in the shadows sheltered by trees but adjacent to warmer sunny spot.  It didn’t look like this everywhere but it certainly was a common sight."

Toured out of Canyon Village in the park on Dunraven Peak near Mt Washburn. South aspect around 9100. Lots of whumpfs and settlements. Really wild how far they were traveling. ECTP1 on the facets above a crust. Didn’t believe it and had an ECTP5 nearby. Really glad we had planned to enjoy easy meadow skipping for the day instead… 60cm HSN, crust is about 25cm down. Just wanted to put it on your radar with what is being seen around Cooke. Really variable surface too with another crust forming and large SH. 

-JP