Natural avalanches Bridgers

Drove up to Bridger at noon and saw a large avalanche on along the road north of the fire station. It was 75’ wide, 1-1.5’ deep and 25’ vertical. HS-N-R4-D1.5/2. It was on an east facing slope, south of the long slope that has cornices. The slope with cornices hadn’t slid at this point. On the way home at 3:30 the larger slope with cornices had slid. It was very big, possibly R5. 1.5-2’ deep, 200’ wide, huge chunks of hard slab and cornice. Looks like new wind-loaded snow with some gouges into older snow.

From Olson creek I had a cloud free flat light view of the ridge from Saddle to Bridger Peak and looked with binoculars. There was a wind slab just north of quarter saddle that did not go over the cliffs. Probably 1-2’ deep, 30’ wide of new snow. There was a large wind slab on the north half of Between the Peaks (250’ wide) and one similar depth wind slab in the Pinnacles (100’ wide). Both of these broke 1-3’ deep immediately below the cornice and did not entrain much snow or propagate very wide or downslope given how much new snow there was. I could see the debris from the slide between the peaks which ran over 1000’ vertical to the top of the runout zone but relatively low volume.