Spent the day slogging up to Gunsight Mountain in Glacier. Temp at the parking lot around 8am was already 30 degrees.
-The trail is now in perfect boblsed track form.. solid ice until just past the Snyder Lake trails. Spikes recommended...
-Lots of debrise from the past week scattered across the trail below the southern ridge of Edwards. Multiple wet slides scattered throughout the Sperry Chalet basin from previous week; fewer as elevation gained. Sizes ranged from D1 to D3.
-Temperatures remained below freezing above ~7,500 feet. Light winds at Comeau Pass/Gunsight; no wind below the pass. Everything above Feather Woman Lake was solid; no signs of instability, no wind slabs. Just.. frozen solid. Remained like this throughout the day.
-Skied off the Western peak of Gunsight Mountain; extremely variable snow. Still fun.
-On the exit, snow on west and south aspects started to become saturated below 7,000 ft; by the time we reached 6,000 ft the snow was extremely wet; skis were sinking 6-8." Triggered a couple small wet slides on some steeper slopes while traversing, but nothing that we were surprised about.
-No signs of new avalanches during the course of the day despite the high temps/solars.
-The ski out on the boblsled track was the crux of the day; thankfully we survived.
Sperry Glacier Trail up to Gunsight Mtn.
Date of failure and number of avalanches estimated by FAC based on author's comments. "Regarding the number of D2s and D1s.. there were so many different slides that came off Edwards and a few off the ridge between Lincoln Peak and Gunsight Mtn that I didn't get a count."
Size and failure date estimated by FAC per author's comments "As for the D3, while there were multiple slides that came off the south shoulder of Edwards (pk 7446), two had much larger debris fields that traveled down past the trail, with one having a couple snow boulders that were the size of cars and looked to have broken some trees in the path. It would be interesting to see if someone with more experience classifying avalanche size/destructive potential would agree with our observation but that's what we came up with"
Date and number of events estimated from author's comments.
