Isothermal

We traveled in South Glacier Park starting late this morning to see how deeply the snowpack was warming.

• The snowpack here is between 1.5 and 4' deep and was isothermal (wet to the ground) on W-S-E aspects below 6500'.
• It was easy to trigger loose wet avalanches that gouged deeply into the snowpack on easterly aspects by late morning.
• We saw many recent loose wet avalanches that have run at mid and upper elevations. We saw several new slides run around noon. Most were D1-D2 on E-S-W aspects, some were on NE and NW aspects. We looked, but didn't spot any large persistent slab avalanches.
• We left the summit after noon and were probably 2 hours too late for good corn. We stuck to lower angled, W and SW facing terrain hoping to have better snow, but we still sank to our knees with our skis on every time we stopped moving.