Woosh, Moosh, Boosh

Three different avalanche problems, three different danger ratings for three different elevation bands. We went for a tour in southern Glacier Park to try to make sense of it all.

• The Woosh: Above 6,000 feet we experienced moderate winds with gusts strong enough to blow us over. We saw 2 recent natural avalanches that looked to be the result of wind loading some time in the last 24 hours. We saw periods of blowing snow across ridgelines. We found that hard old wind slabs and soft new wind slabs on leeward slopes were stubborn to trigger on test slopes. But we did get some shooting cracks from our skis in these small drifts. New slabs were building throughout the afternoon.
  • We dug a test pit to look at the persistent slab problem and got consistent propagating test results on moist facets under a crust near the ground. We didn't have and whumpfing on these layers while we were skiing.
• The Moosh: The snow was wet up to about 6,100 feet. We saw natural rollerballs and could easily trigger large rollers and small point releases on very steep terrain features. Rain in the afernoon readch up to 5,500 feet.
• The Boosh: What snow there is below 5,500 feet was wet. Our skis and boots sank through the full snowpack (12 to 0 inches) to the ground. We were hiking below 5,300 feet.
• We avoided steep, leeward, alpine terrain. And our uncertainty over the persistent slab problem kept us off of steep, rocky start zones. But given the choice between skiing low angled elmer's glue and steep glue, I'm not sure we were missing much.