Getting Deep in Cooke City, Rasta Chutes - 16 February 2020

Cooke City is getting deep! The total snow height is 315 cm. Our pit results on Scotch Bonnet were a variety of ECTNs in the upper layers of the snowpack. When placing our probe for stability tests we could feel the weak snow near the ground as our probes just dropped through the lower 60 cm of the snowpack. I am still worried about the deep layers, but it has been a while since they performed and it seems like it will take a big trigger (i.e. a cornice drop), a big storm to add weight, or some really bad luck to trigger one of the monster avalanches on the basal facets. Photo: GNFAC

Location
Advisory Year
Cooke City, 2020-02-16