Baptiste

Overall we found excellent skiing conditions and a mostly stable snowpack. There was however one outlier that alaramed us.

• We observed only a few recent natural avalanches. These were all loose dry and likely occurred over the last few days.
• Solar aspects warmed and ititiated numerous small rollerballs. We felt a cold south wind pick up soon after, which helped keep surfaces cool. 
• This past weekends storm snow totaled up to 16 to 20 inches of snow. This snow appears to be bonding well to the underlying crust. We did find the 12/10 freezing rain crust within the new snow. This crust was unoticable while riding.
• The 12/7 crust was 1 to 2 inches thick at our high point of roughly 8100 feet. 
• We got unstable snowpit results on a very sheltered slope at 7400 feet on a northwest aspect. Here the crust was thin and a very tall layer of surface hoar existed a few inches beneath the crust. 
  • This structure was found no where else. I'll add that we dug 10 to 15 other hand pits and could not replicate it. 
  • Surface hoar is notoriously spotty, and for whatever reason the crust was thinner there than anywhere else. My takeaway was that I have zero interest in finding a slope with that structure. Deep enough to trigger, and deep enough that you won't know the slope is unstable until it fails. 

We ruled out sheltered slopes and headed over to a west faceing slope where we were confident the supportable crust existed, and the buried surface hoar got destroyed. We enjoyed excellent turns in steep terrain.

• 3 to 8 inches of snow exists between 4000 and 6000 feet. There was virtually no difference in depths at low and mid-elevation.
• Observed roughly 40 cm (16 inches) of recent snow. We observed no signs of instability in this new snow.
• The 12/7 crust extends past 8000 feet in the Flathead Range. The crust varied in thickness depending on aspect and elevation. 
• On a very sheltered northwest aspect we found the 12/7 crust to be less than a cm with burried surface hoar underneath. 
  • I honestly don't have a great explanation for why the crust was so thin there, and 2 to 3 inches thick everywhere else.  
  • We got an ECTP17 that failed 60 cm below the surface on a layer of surface hoar.