Sheep Creek Obs

Here are our observations from Cooke City today. Our plan was to tour up the south side of Miller Mountain as far as we felt comfortable. Winds were mostly calm during the day, and temperatures were darn-right cold all day, even on southerly aspects. It was -26F when we pulled into town.

The sheep creek drainage had a lot of evidence of prior wind transport, most non-sheltered aspects had textured snow. We dug a pit at 9600’, HS was 190cm! At 150cm above the ground, we encountered a 1cm thick melt-freeze crust with small facets forming over it’s surface. We also noted 4-finger basal facets all the way at the ground.

Our ECT produced nothing terribly remarkable. ECTN25 and ECTN26 on the melt-freeze crust. It could be a layer to look out for in the near-future. The snow above treeline began to stiffen, so we ripped skins around 10k feet and had a lovely ski down.