Cooke City

Now’s a great time to head up high and explore alpine terrain. Unfortunately winds left few slopes untouched making it harder to find nice soft snow. It also means there may be some wind slabs that could cause a problem today. In more consequential terrain, I’d choose slopes that show signs of being scoured or where the wind removed some snow and avoid spots where they deposited snow.

The snowpack was solidly frozen in many places yesterday morning, warmed up yesterday on sunny slopes but no round of  wet snow avalanche activity. Things should be solidly refrozen this morning, and I don’t expect any wet loose avalanches today with some cooler air moving over the area.

Winds from the NW continue to swirl around a little snow but there isn’t a lot of snow left for them to transport. Dave and Andrea spotted a very small wind slab avalanche along Buck Ridge just south of Big Sky yesterday. Most older and larger wind slabs have likely stabilized, and wind slab avalanches today should be small and located at higher elevations.

In the Southern Madison and Gallatin Ranges and the Lionhead area, a persistent slab avalanche problem is still a concern but moving towards being dormant as a group found on Tuesday in the Southern Gallatin Range. The last reported persistent slab  avalanche was 5 days ago. Personally I wouldn’t totally trust the weak layer. If getting onto steeper slopes, I’d choose ones with a clean runout free of any terrain traps like rocks, trees, or gullies.

Periods of high pressure, like we have now, are often great opportunities to move up high into more serious terrain. I would not “go for it” in areas with lingering persistent slab avalanche problem. In other areas, you can certainly get onto many slopes safely, but elevated winds drifting snow are keeping things from being a full green light. Dave describes a few good strategies in his video from yesterday.

The danger today throughout the forecast area is MODERATE generally at higher elevations.