East Fork Big Wood

I went to an area right on the border between the Galena Summit and Eastern Mtns zone and the Soldier and Wood River Valley Mtns zone. The snowpack here just received its first major load of the season and the results weren't pretty. 

I experienced some very touchy conditions. Without exaggeration, I collapsed nearly every slope I touched, with a total collapsed area measured in square miles potentially (!?). Down low these were wet collapses, occurring in a rain-soaked snowpack that was wet to the ground. These collapses routinely traveled hundreds of feet. Up higher, I experienced huge, booming collapses where the snowpack has remained dry. All collapses involved 1/6 to 11/30 weak layers, which have both become a basal weak layer in places where the snowpack has remained thin. Many collapses resulted in a vertical displacement of the snowpack of 1-3cm. At middle and upper elevations, where the snowpack is dry, these collapses produced large cracks that extended for hundreds to thousands of feet (!).