Quick report
Spent the long weekend in Essex touring in the Southern Flathead Range. • Light winds, cold temps, and continual snowfall resulted in some excellent riding conditions. • Middle and upper elevations have received 12+ inches of new snowfall since Friday 2/14. • We dug one pit at a middle elevation site on a SE facing slope. Test results were non propagating. More details in the attached graph and snowpack section. • We intentionally triggered one dry loose avalanche in lower elevation terrain on Sunday. - We had chosen to descend through a relatively short ENE facing pitch that exceeded 40º on our exit. - The slough ran approximately 300 vertical feet before terminating in lower angled terrain.. - This avalanche involved very light and dry snow that moved swiftly downhill. It would have been unlikely for a skier to descend fast enough to out run the slide or similar. - The avalanche involved the copious amounts of recent snowfall as well as some of the faceted snow beneath it. - We utilized defensive skiing strategies for managing this problem while descending this steeper terrain. And most of the time avoided the problem entirely by sticking to slopes less than about 35º No signs of instability other than substantial loose dry problems on slopes exceeding 40º.
Weather
- Air Temp
- -11
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Recent Snowfall
- 4
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Cold arctic air pooled in Essex overnight. With this, came some strong E winds on the canyon floor. Winds were much calmer and mostly absent of us while traveling above 5000' Approximately 3 inches of new snow fell over night. (measured on yesterday's skin track.
Snowpack
Snowpit dug at ~5900' on a southeast facing slope • The bottom three quarters of the snowpack is almost completely faceted. • Test results: Down 9 inches- ECTN11, ECTN12, CT9 Q3. Down 16 inches- ECTN22, ECTN23 Down 2 feet- ECTN28, CT25 Q1 • More details can be found in the attached pit graph.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- AR
- Elevation
- 5100 ft
One loose dry avalanche intentionally triggered at ~5100' on an ENE facing slope.