Grant Ridge

A wet and soggy day in the Flathead. We stayed on trails and ridgelines to access upper elevations. Getting off-trail at low and mid-elevations right now is not recommended.

• Rain turned to snow at 5000 feet. Wet and isothermic snow turned to dry snow at roughly 5800 feet.
• We began to receive signs of unstable snow at the transition to dry snow at 5800 feet.
• • We got it all: audible collapses, shooting cracks,  and triggered small avalanches.
  • Large cornices failed with a simple poke of a ski pole.
• NOTE: The shooting cracks and slabs we triggered broke surprisingly far back on the ridge. This was the type of hard slab that would pull into lower-angle terrain or far back on the ridge.
• Slabs were hard (1 Finger) and 1 to 2 feet thick.

We kept slope angles low and gave ridgelines a wide berth.

Bountiful signs of instability. We triggered small avalanches, initiated surprisingly long shooting cracks, and had numerous audible whumpfs while traveling along the ridge.

We dug a snowpit at 6600 feet on a ESE aspect.

HS: 100cm. We found a buried layer of surface hoar and near-surface facets at 55 cm. The surface hoar was broken pieces and not standing upright. Other than that the snowpack really looked pretty good.