Where the wild things are

Traveled into Park Creek (Southern GNP) for several nights as part of a wildlife survey. I am including a few notes in regards to weather, avalanche activity observed, and (now buried) surface snow conditions.

• 3/07/20
  • Mostly cloudy, light to moderate S winds, freezing level above 5000 feet most of day. snow surface was warm yet dense and supportive. Freezing rain started at 5:30pm and transitioned to snow some time after dark. less than an inch snow accumulation.

• 3/08/20
  • Mostly cloudy, woke up to a half inch of new snow, lightly snowing most of the day with several covective pulses in short-lived heavy precip.
  • Skiing was supportive and fast with a skif of new to keep the snow quiet. We traveled up to 7,700 feet on a west facing slope and found areas where the new snow had cross loaded and drifted up to 8 inches thick.
  • We conducted stability test to see if these wind slabs would be reactive. Our results were ECTX, CT10 @ 15cm below surface. and CTN.
  • These fresh windslabs were reactive on test slopes and we also found that the new snow was primed for loose dry activity in steep terrain. We intentionally triggered two loose dry sluffs that ran ~800' during out descents.

• 3/09/20
  • Sunny skies, moderate winds and strong gust from the southwest, awoke to temps in the 20s and 1 inch of new snow at 4800'.
  • Traveled further up the canyon to look for mountain goats near the continental divide.
  •  Around 9:30am-10:30am, we observed numerous (10-20) natural loose dry avalanches on Vigil Peak and Battlement Mountain. These avalaches were running through extreme, rocky, steep terrain on the north faces of the peaks. They were presumably triggered by fresh wind slab instabilities, rime mushroom features colapsing, or cornices collapsing. The largest slides observed ran ~ 1500-1700 feet.
  •  Despite the intense solar input throughout the day, The light winds seems to keep the snow surface cold and dry.

• 3/10/20
  • Strong winds overnight deteriorated skiing conditions leaving a firm wind scoured surface in unsheltered terrain. We traveled up Striped Elk Creek (Rotunda Cirque) and found the winds to be blowing down the canyon (from the west) scraping the new snow off of both south and north facing aspects. However, at the same time, winds were blowing hard up the main valley, Park Creek (from the South Southwest). We skiied an east facing run into the main valley and found that our run was blown off by the valley winds except in more sheltered terrain. 
  • We retreated down valley. The weather remained mostly cloudy and blustery throughout the day. The snow conditions were cold and fast.

3/11/20

• For our final day we awoke to 2 inches of grauple and warm weather. The snow was sticky and slow. We walked out in a wet snowstorm all the way to Walton RS. We observed a steep cutbank on the middle fork that was actively releasing wet loose avalanches into the river. After getting back to the trailhead we proceeded up towards Marias Pass to retrieve a second vehical. We were surprised to find almost 9 inches of extremely wet new snow up that way, whereas there was only an inch down by essex.