Quarantined in the Flathead Range

Day off tour into the Flathead Range to soak up the sunshine, fresh air, and see what the recent storm left us. I was pleasantly surprised to find 4 to 6 inches of new snow that was mostly untouched by recent winds. There were isolated wind slabs and we took note of the wind-scoured, alpine faces.

• Widespread natural soft slab cycle which likely occurred on the 14th. These 2 to 4 inch slabs were not big enough to bury or injure someone. We laughed at the fact that it was widespread in one drainage with very few in the adjacent drainage.
• The two notable avalanches found were on a NE aspect and a SE aspect at mid and upper elevations. One started as a shallow, yet wide soft slab that stepped down to roughly a foot deep. This one ran ~800 vertical feet and deposited 4 feet of debris. The other on Mt. Penrose was too distant to gain specific details. The debris pile from afar looked big enough to bury or injure you.
• On our ascent, we were unable to initiate shooting cracks other than in locations that recently got wind loaded. New snow sluffed easily.

After processing the information we collected, we felt comfortable managing our sluff in steep terrain that was sheltered from the wind. We did stop a few hundred feet shy of our objective due to wind loading and previous shooting cracks on wind drifted test slopes.