The Sprague Creek Slog

Today we traveled (or some would say slogged) up the Sprague creek drainage in Glacier National Park to get a better look at the variable conditions predicated in the forecast today. We dug a series of pits along an elevation gradient on north facing slopes from 6600 ft to about 6000ft.

• Persistent slabs were observed above the AR rain crust and produced less reactive results in our stability tests than we had anticipated. 
  • From 6600 ft - 6150 ft on N aspect, we observed a 1 in thick pencil hard rain crust that increased in thickness to 20 cm thick at 6100 ft. It was buried 40-45 cm below the surface. Generally, the snow would fracture during stability tests at the new snow-old snow interface as well as the on the AR rain crust. The only propagation/ sudden collapse we saw was in the profile at ~6100 ft.More detailed observations of our snow pit analysis can be found in the snowpack and weather details tab. 
• On south facing slopes, rollerballs (image) initiated off of our skis when taking hard turns on steep slopes but did not release naturally on more mellow slopes. With increased solar radiation throughout the day we could see the wet loose avalanche problem increase. 
• We witnessed 5-6 wet loose slides on extremely steep, rocky, south facing slopes. They were not any larger than D1 but could certainly carry a skier. 
• We saw recent debris in the runouts of very steep, northwest facing avalanche paths (image). We could not date this debris and did not see any crowns. We didn't see any crowns on nearby peaks (good visibility)
• We were able to get some great turns on a NW aspect at the start of our descent at 6000 ft but the skiing conditions quickly deteriorated as we descended. A thick crust held up our skis and made turning challenging below about 5800 ft. 
• Wind was very minimal today and no blowing snow was observed, even at our highest and most exposed aspect. Wind loading from previous days was observed but no noticeable failure was apparent.