Anderson Mountain

Todays goal was to dig further into the persistent slab issue in the southern Bitterroot. We traveled south toward Anderson Mountain, into terrain we have not yet been into this season. In years past, this area has held pockets of abnormally weak snow. 

What we found today was overall stable conditions. Between 7000' and 8000', the buried Christmas crust exists but is unreactive in pits despite faceted snow below it. Above 8000', the crust becomes thin enough to not pose a problem. 

While winds were light, clouds above were moving fast and the uppermost ridgelines showed signs of wind transport with blowing snow. I would describe the slabs that formed as very soft wind slabs with cracks that did not propagate far. 

The poor snowpack structure seems to be limited to terrain between 7000' and 8000' on all aspects. It shows signs of forming through melt layer recrystalization, which lines up with the weather pattern at the time of crust formation and subsequent faceting around it. While unreactive, we still avoided slopes over 35 degrees in this elevation band due to the poor snowpack structure. 

Isolated cracking in the new snow but not enough to call it a sign of widespread instability.