Public Observation - Spring ride in the south fork, Swan Range

We were fortunate enough to be able to drive 1.5 miles up the lost Johnny road in our vehicles and unload and ride from there. Snow bridge was completely in tact, though we could hear the creek was pretty full!  We rode into lost Johnny in the earlier hours around 10. The snow was still a bit hard, all that was showing were paddle marks for tracks. From there into the distance toward Hash Mt. we were able to note huge cornices from a long distance away. We continued over to wounded buck, strawberry lake, lid creek, and back over and up to hash. The snow continued to soften the ought the day and there was a good 8 inches of fresh snow in wounded buck. The snowpack was much softer and unstable there. Strawberry lake was beginning to show signs of melt and stagnant water was sitting atop the ice. While passing through the back end of wounded buck, we crossed large avalanche terrain that had already partially slid. Above were cornices the size of school buses and the avalanche itself was very large wth a massive runout at least 7 feet deep at the bottom. Crown was about 2 feet deep. We noted many avalanches when looking out from the top of hash. Areas where the slide had taken everything down to the dirt. Throughout the day we saw many small slides that hardly could gain any magnitude but did move slowly in its path.  Wet loose avalanches were  frequent and we noticed lots of roller balls when making a track through slopes   We were very careful about route finding as some of the areas had not come down or had partially slid. We ended the day back at the truck, took off the snowpack ts and threw on shorts! Love this time of year in Montana:)