Date of Observation: 03/19/2023
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Yule Creek area
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few small triggered and natural wind slabs from northwesterly winds channeling down valley. A large persistent slab on the east side of Justice looks like it ran during the last storm.
Photos:
6132
Date of Observation: 03/18/2023
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Mt Baldy SE face
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Snowmobile triggered around 5pm today. No humans caught. More to come.
Photos:
6131
Date of Observation: 03/18/2023
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Slate River
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Snowpack: Loose-dry and Loose wet avalanches looked like the primary avalanche problems NTL and BTL. Both natural and skier-triggered. Most of the wet avalanche activity appeared to have occurred yesterday or previously. I didn’t travel on southerly-facing slopes today and don’t know how wet they got, but temperatures did feel cooler than yesterday. The only recent slab avalanche I saw was in the Great Wide Open of Skooks. It looked like it failed after yesterday morning’s 1″ of fairy dust.
Photos:
6130
Date of Observation: 03/18/2023
Name: Zach Guy
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Traveled on all aspects of Mt. CB to 11,800 to observe current snow surfaces ahead of the next storm.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Had good views with binoculars of a lot of terrain. Nothing notable from the past few days; some small loose avalanches and recent cornice fall/wind slab activity off of Owen that looked to be about D1.5 in size.
Weather: Notable 30-degree diurnal swing at Butte SNOTEL past 36 hours with temps dropping to near zero overnight, and highs near freezing. Light winds, clear skies.
Snowpack: The current snow surface is the most widespread and notable near-surface faceting event I’ve observed this spring, which will spell trouble for the upcoming storm. The combination of low-density snow at the tail of the last storm, light winds, and big temperature swings the last few days have promoted faceting in the upper few cm’s of the snowpack. Today’s cool temps and strong March solar were ideal for radiation recrystallization. I found 1cm of dry, faceting grains above thin crusts (1 to 3 cm) on east, south, and west aspects, grain sizes about 1mm in size. Northerly aspects held cohesionless facets, ~1mm. I suspect only the lowest elevation southerlies got warm enough to cook off, but I didn’t verify that.
Photos:
6129
Date of Observation: 03/17/2023
Name: Chris Martin
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Aspen to CB via Starr Pass. We traveled over the pass via wind scoured ribs and ridges Wednesday morning before the intense precip of another river Wednesday evening.
We awoke thursday evening to the most quality powder skiing i’ve ever experienced in the friends hut zone.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Carbonate Hill Flank SE – D2 R2 Hard Slab – Natural – failing at the ground, seemingly sometime Wednesday evening
Many various shallow storm slabs failing on solar crusts about 4-12″ in thickness
Weather: Heavy precip Wednesday PM along with howling winds
Clear sunny skies Thursday
Snowpack:
Photos:
6128
Date of Observation: 03/17/2023
Name: Zach Guy
6127
Date of Observation: 03/17/2023
Name: Frank Stern
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Wolverine Basin
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: N facing slope 12,000’
Weather: Sunny
Snowpack: Powder on N aspects, crust on S
Photos:
6126
Date of Observation: 03/17/2023
Name: Travis Guy
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite to Kettle Ponds
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: 3 avalanches that had already run on 2nd bowl. Appeared to be natural as I couldn’t make out any tracks
Weather: Mostly sunny. -8C, no wind, but signs of drifting overnight
Snowpack:
Photos:
6124
Date of Observation: 03/16/2023
Name: Eric Murrow
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Hwy 135 obs.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few natural avalanches seen from the pavement. A couple small slabs in the storm snow in Green Lake Bowl on Axtel, a large avalanche in the Octagon area on Whetstone that appears to fail below the past two storms (3/10), a small avalanche on Red Mountain (could be from the warm up on Tuesday, but I suspect occurred Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and a west-facing avalanches on Round Mountain that I believe failed during warming on Thursday (looks like it failed on 3/10 interface).
Weather:
Snowpack:
Photos:
6123
Date of Observation: 03/16/2023
Name: Grant Robbins
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Skinning up Snodgrass and across the valley appeared to be an avalanche on south aspect of Red Ridge area.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Photos:
6122
