Saddle Peak

At the end of yesterday we hiked out to ski Saddle in 40+ mile per hour winds and blowing snow. Visibility had improved to a few hundred feet. Once on top getting down off the ridgeline proved challenging with cornices growing considerably in the last 48 hours of the snowstorm. Upon kicking pieces of cornice off we watched slabs dropping propagate fractures that ran 150 to 200 feet out, 2 to 3 feet deep and out of sight in a few seconds.

Unnerved, we did something we rarely do. We climbed back up onto the ridgeline and skied it back down toward the Football Field and Bitter End at Bridger, choosing not to ski Saddle. Once above Football Field we observed the same thing: upon the slightest contact, fractures propagating through the windloaded snowpack beneath the cornice line and running a couple hundred feet downhill, a couple feet deep, easily powerful enough to sweep a rider off their feet and possibly several hundred feet downslope. We tiptoed out humbled.