Avalanche gallery on Heavens Peak

Today's tour into Glacier Park was highlighted by some impressive persistent slab avalanches that ran earlier in the week.

• We noted 3 seperate hard slab avalanche events that were each large enough to snap trees that likely ran during Tuesday's storm.   The crowns were 3 to 5 feet thick, on E to NE aspects above 7,000' in elevation. and failing at or just below the faceted October 25th rain crust. 
• We also noted a handful of wind slabs up to D1.5 that ran as recently as yesterday.  These were on crossloaded alpine slopes from NE winds, and some may have been triggered by solar warming subsequent to earlier wind loading. 
• A bathtub ring of large surface hoar exists on the snow surface between about 5800' and 6,300', just above the stratus cloud deck.  
• The 11/19 rain crust reaches up to about 6,500' and has 8" or less of faceting new snow above it.  The snowpack quickly tapers to almost nil by 5,000'.  
• Given clear evidence of a persistent slab structure at higher elevations and uncertainty in assessing a thick hard slab problem, we changed plans to stay off of our steeper terrain objectives in the alpine and enjoyed the stable skiing at mid elevations or traveled on low angle slopes, debris, and bed surfaces at upper elevations.