Cracking in the Blackmore Area
Toured up into the Blackmore area today and found a pretty interesting upper snowpack with everything below roughly 8500’ wet from yesterday’s green housing and up slope winds in the Hyalite area. From trailhead to our peak elevation at 9500’ the new snow from last night ranged from a dusting to about 3 inches and capped the wet snow. Above 9000’ winds were actively loading the snow and I got cracking and a very small slab to release on a small wind drifted roll over at 9500’ on a N aspect. Later in our tour we dropped a cornice on an E slope and there was no avalanche activity, albeit the snowpack below the cornice seemed to be very thin as the cornice pulled off most of the surface snow and exposed a lot of rock. Overall decent ski conditions above 8500’.