Scenery Mtn

Despite challenging access and dismal snow coverage at low elevations, Mikey and Jackson successfully ascended to 6900 feet near the northern boundary of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

One of the main surprises from the day was that overall snow depths in the mountains near Libby seemed notabably lower than what we have been finding recently in the southern part of the East Cabinet Mountains forecast zone. We were however pleased to find relatively good stability in the snowpack structure along the ridgetop that we traveled.

No signs of instability found and no recent avalanche activity observed. We targeted upper elevation terrain for today's closer inspections of the snowpack, since we have generally been lacking information above 6500 feet elevation across all of the forecast zones. Details from our pit findings are in the snowpack section of this observation.

none observed

Almost no snow below 5000 where we traveled at the far northern terminus of the East Cabinet Mountains. Coverage looked similar or worse in the Eastern half of the Purcell Mountains as we gazed across the Kootenai River Canyon west of Libby, Montana. We climbed to the top of Scenery Mountain today, and completed two snow profiles on a NE facing slope at 6800 and a SE facing slope at 6800.

Northeast Aspect 6800 feet-

• Total depth 199cm
• About 4 inches of soft snow capping a supportable crust (2/7 interface)
• 1/28 interface was about 40cm down but there was no buried surface hoar present
• Extended Column test produced no result. 2/7 crust likely improving stability here, making it less likely for humans or machines to impact any weak layers deeping in the snowpack.

 

Southeast Aspect 6800 feet-

• Total depth 113cm
• 1 inch of soft snow capping a hard supportable crust (2/7 interface)
• Entire snowpack was a conglomerate of hard ice layers with facets in between.
• Effects from intense warming last week were significant, however there was not any warm moist snow present anymore within the snowpack.
• Several ice layers were clear and translucent, likely the result of liquid water percolating through the snowpack and pooling on old hard layers before refreezing.
• Extensive faceting between crust layers is the result of a very thin snowpack for February at this elevation.
• Extented Column Tests produced no result.
• Stability and structure seemed good at this location on this aspect.