Quick report
We traveled up Spring Creek on the west side of the Teton Range today. Partly cloudy skies allowed us to observe multiple aspects at upper elevations and peer deeper into the mountains. We found four recent avalanches on north through northeast-facing terrain at upper elevations near the Spring Creek trail. These avalanches appeared to fail in the old snow on a NSF layer that developed on 3/13 and were recent as only 2cm of new snow was present on the bed surface. We witnessed one additional avalanche likely failing on old snow south of Darby Canyon. We did not see any other avalanches or signs of instability. These avalanches we observed today continue to demonstrate the current theme. The windslab problem continues to linger in specific terrain features where weaker layers developed during a warm period and then received a significant load of snow. These avalanches may break deeper than expected and behave stubbornly.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Above-freezing temperatures at the parking lot. Temperatures at upper elevations remained below freezing through the day. Clouds remained through our time in the field, limiting the total solar exposure on the snow. Winds were calm up to 9400'.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- NE
- Elevation
- 9400 ft
We observed four avalanches on NE-facing terrain near 9000'. These avalanches failed on a near-surface facet layer - formed on March 13th - averaging 60cm (2 feet) deep at the ridgetop. We assume these avalanches were triggered by snowmobiles but had difficulty finding tracks that fit this hypothesis. We also saw an avalanche south of Darby Canyon that failed on east-facing terrain at upper elevations - likely in the old snow. All of these avalanches appear to have occurred within the past 24 hours.