Quick report
We went to the southern Whitefish Range today to visit a Level 1 course and visit the site of two reported avalanches.
- Reported avalanches were confirmed to be two separate events in the same area.
- Both slides had characteristics of wind slabs with failure on a buried weak layer.
- Crown depths ranged from 10cm to 40cm. The average depth was approximately 20cm.
- One slide was approximately 200 feet wide, while the other was approximately 50 feet wide.
- We skied south and southeast aspects. Solar input continued to warm the surface snow, making for mashed potato snow consistency turns.
- The snow surface on northeast aspects stayed dry, however, our travel was limited on these aspects.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 28 to 33
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 3500
- Recent Snowfall
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Clear skies and sunny until noon. Winds were light and clouds rolled in around 1215 pm. Warm air temperatures, even with light winds.
Snowpack
Snowprofile next the avalanche crown on a southeast aspect at 6,114 feet.
- HS: 165 cm
- Early February crust complex was 41 cm from the surface.
- Avalanche appeared to fail on a faceted weak layer below a melt-freeze crust 21 cm from the surface.
- Solar input from the past few days has moistened the top 20 cm of the snow, so changes in the snowpack have likely impacted the buried weak layer since the avalanche was reported.
- Debris from both slides was a mixture of hard and soft slab properties.
- We did not have propagating results in our long column test: ECTX
- No propagation in our column test. CTN
Avalanche
No recent avalanches were observed today.