Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
We toured up point 8587, down the Sears lake couloir to Sears lake, then back up to 8587 and down the South gully to Blodgett creek. During our tour, we covered a lot of ground on all aspects and did not observe any collapsing or any natural activity other than sluffing on steep slopes. We did not dig a pit. We found up to 8" of snow that had fallen in this storm since Friday. The storm snow had blown into soft slabs up to 12" deep along ridge tops. We were able to get some very isolated cracking but did not observe reactive wind slabs on any aspect. We were able to generate minor manageable sluffs in steep terrain on all aspects. The only sign of instability we observed was that in multiple locations and elevations we could get a 3" wind slab directly under the new snow to crack and propagate on top of facted snow. It appeared that at the end of last week's dry spell, strong winds formed thin surface slabs and hadn't healed up completely yet. We observed this most on thin west facing aspects, and on some thin South facing aspects. Subjectively, I don't think that this will pose a long term problem. We avoided consequential wind loaded starting zones out of habit but generally felt comfortable skiing steep terrain on all aspects. The Blodgett trail has good coverage and is skiable continuously from the car. Presumably this is an indicator that trail coverage is adequate for skiing on most of the Bitterroot canyon trails.