Driving and glassing Hailey to the Salmon River Headwaters
Quick report
Photos are attached of over 50 fresh, large avalanches that appeared to release primarily during the intense end of the storm on Monday night/Tuesday morning. The slides observed during the glassing mission occurred almost entirely on W-N-E aspects, with a little activity bleeding over to SW and SE. One or 2 slides in Croy involved weak snow from early in the season. All other slides appeared to fail on weak snow that formed during the January drought. Snowfall and wind erased evidence of some of the documented/photographed avalanches that released earlier in the storm, over the weekend (crowns, tracks, and debris completely filled in). In alpine terrain, there was faint evidence of many natural avalanches where crowns, tracks, and debris were mostly or entirely covered.
Cracking and collapsing are N/A.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Skies were CLR in much of the Wood River Valley and Boulder Mtns, and partly cloudy in the Smoky Mtns from the south to Bromaghin. The NW Smoky Mtns near Smiley Ck were partially obscured, and the Sawtooths were completely obscured when I was out. Previous wind loading was intense. Winds were blowing snow over ridges and knocking snow off trees in middle elevation this afternoon, but it was hard to tell if it was actually loading anything.
Snowpack
Profound wind effects in upper and middle elevation terrain.
Rain runnels to about 6500-6800' in Croy Canyon. The lower elevation snowpack in the Hailey area appeared saturated (free water to the ground).
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 13
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 7900 ft
The fresher, D2 or larger avalanches are entered above. There was evidence of countless avalanches that occurred earlier in the storm and were blow in by the wind. There was a lot of additional small, wet loose activity below 6500' between Hailey and Ketchum - these slides occurred Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning.