And Gator Makes Three

We toured up Peak 6996 looking for today's avalanche problems. Found all 3 of them.

• We easily kicked off recent wind slabs on small rollovers between 5600' and 6100'. West winds yesterday morning built slabs on easterly aspects. After the winds shifted NE yesterday afternoon (when they also decreased in intensity) softer, smaller, and more isolated wind slabs developed on westerly and southerly aspects. Slabs were most reactive on easterly aspects. We stopped testing slopes above 6100' because the slopes get larger and the consequences escalate.
• We experienced 2 whumpfs between 5500' and 5800' on E and SE aspects as the 1/17 surface hoar layer collapsed below us. We did a quick test pit between these 2 collapses and confirmed the layer of concern. We got propagating results in well preserved surface hoar buried 22" down. When I was at the same location on the 19th I did not have any feedback from the surface hoar layer and didn't locate it. It just goes to show how tricky it can be.
• With good visibility today we spent a long time at the summit with binoculars and a camera with descent zoom looking for recent deep slab avalanches on the surrounding peaks. We saw only one crown to the west in the Flathead Range. It was a long way off and it was hard to determine how new it is. We also dug another test pit to the ground at 6700' to test the deep persistent layer. Weak (F hard) depth hoar at the bottom of the snowpack is rounding. We did get test results that indicate that it can still propagate if triggered. It is under 4-7' of well consolidated snow in that area. Tests targeting shallower layers (like the new storm snow) in this pit had no propagating results.
• Sunny day with cold temps and occasional light winds above treeline. We did see blowing snow from north winds off of the highest peaks in the morning, but none the rest of the day. On solar aspects the top inch of snow was getting moist enough to make snowballs even up at 7000' by 1pm. Almost all other snow surfaces were sparkly, well preserved stellar crystals which means they fell with little to no wind. New snow totals were between 8" and a foot.