Poor Stability on Woody Ridge

We were surprised by the abundant signs of instability nine days after the last measurable snow in Cooke City.

We toured up Republic Creek today towards Woody Ridge. When moving through fresh snow or stepping off the skin track, we felt many localized collapses. Near the top of the ridge, we felt a large collapse. Our stability tests showed worse test scores than expected, ECTP11. The bottom 55 cm of the snowpack was faceted and weak, on top of this was a slab that formed with early December storms. Collapsing, poor structure, and low stability test scores kept us out of avalanche terrain.

Alex was in Cooke City on Sunday and observed signs of instability and poor snowpack structure (Read his observations HERE). The poor structure and instability is more wide spread than we initially thought, and has not noticibly improved.