23-24

Photo of a natural avalanche that was reported on 02/09/2024. Photo taken on 02/10/2024. Photo: Z. Peterson

Member in our group was on the flank of the slope. Crack shot from beneath sled and triggered the slope from ~ 100’ away. Broke about 75 yards wide, ripped to dirt and travelled a short ways to toe of the slope. North facing, 9220’ 

Photo of a natural avalanche that was reported on 02/09/2024. Photo taken on 02/10/2024. Photo: Z. Peterson

Photos of a natural avalanche in the NE/E facing bowl of Ernie Miller Ridge. Likely happened in the last few days. 

We saw one other small avalanche in the trees below the ridge too far for a decent photo. 

Toured up an east facing slope near the northwest arm of Hebgen Lake. We did not experience any collapsing or cracking on or off our ascent route but we did experience whumpfs on the ski down. At the top of the ridge at 9000 ft on either side of our skin track were three different avalanches. They all looked to be natural. One was pre recent storms, one was perhaps 24-48 hours old and maybe 500 feet wide, and one looked to be very recent, perhaps in the last 12 hours. We got a good look at the recent slide. It had no tracks in or out of it. It was at least 200 feet wide and broke 1-1.5 meters deep, gouging to the ground in spots and ran to the trees almost full path. Besides the avalanches, near the ridge line was a 30° planar slope that had a small concavity. There were shooting cracks everywhere, and it looked like the cracks propagated into a slab that would have broken up more if the slope had been steeper. It almost looked like a crevasse field with how many cracks there were. Photo is included but I don't think shows just how broken up that "relatively benign" terrain was. I have never seen anything like that before! 

Was up at Beehive today from 8am-2pm. On our way up, snow was consistently whumping underfoot and in one of these instances, we triggered a small slide that went for 10-15 feet around the coordinates (45.34789, -111.39892) towards the top of the basin. Decided to dig a pit a bit further up the hill for some practice and discovered a weak icy layer a couple feet down, with a couple feet of minor to moderate facets 4-5 feet down.

Toured up Brackett Creek to 8000’ on the E shoulder of Ross Peak. Depth of 90-120cm near 8000’. No propagation in ECT (ENE 7900’). Lots of trail breaking and no collapsing or whumps. No avalanches observed.