West Seeley

The main purpose of today's mission was a snowmobile skills training day with the forecast team. A huge shoutout to The Mountain Riding Lab for facilitating this training! We were also able to gather some valuable observations while we were out. The summation is that the persistent slab problem is stubborn in West Seeley at middle elevations. Were an avalanche to slide, however, it would be quite consequential. The wind slab problem was unreactive but could still be found in isolated terrain features.

We observed cracking next to a very small avalanche that slid from the side of the groomed snowmobile road.

Low coverage still exists at lower elevations. At middle elevations, depths averaged from 65-85 cm or around 2-3 feet. In areas previously wind loaded, depths were an average of 195 cm or 6 feet.

Buried within the snowpack, we found crusts as well as surface hoar. We encountered a small avalanche that slid on a crust/buried surface hoar combination. We performed an extended column test near this avalanche to test the reactivity and got a moderate non-propagating result within the slab (ECTN12). 

We also encountered another very small avalanche that released from the edge of the groomed snowmobile road. This avalanche consisted of very low density new snow. Cracking and further loose sluffs of surface snow were observed next to this avalanche.