GALLATIN NATIONAL FOREST AVALANCHE ADVISORY
                         WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10TH, 1996

Good morning, this is Karl Birkeland with your Gallatin National Forest
Avalanche Advisory for Wednesday, January 10th, issued at 7:30 am.  The next
advisory will be issued tomorrow morning.  Today's advisory is sponsored by
Patagonia.  These advisories do not apply to the local ski areas.

You might not guess it from your couch, but the mountains got a decent blast of
snow last night from a system that pushed its way through the high pressure
ridge currently over the top of us.  Snowfall for the past 24 hours include 9
inches at Bridger Bowl, 5 inches in the Hyalites, 4 to 6 inches in the Madison
Range - including Big Sky - and about a foot in the higher elevation mountains
around Cooke City.  This storm is quickly moving east and by early-morning the
snow should stop throughout our region.  By early afternoon the sun may even
start to poke through the clouds as high pressure moves in.  This high pressure
will dominate our weather over the next several days.  For today, expect mild
mountain temperatures of about 32 degrees.  Winds will be variable...lower
elevations may get some strong southerly winds, while ridgetops should see
winds picking up out of the southwest to northwest at 15 to 35 mph.

Last night's storm delivered some fairly dense snow by Montana standards, with
freezing levels right around 5000 to 6000 feet.  This new snow was added right
on top of the kind of snowpack that makes avalanche forecasters nervous.  The
snowpack has been becoming more stable, but only slowly.  Yesterday we
continued to see signs that the snowpack had not completely stabilized.  A
person up near Mt. Blackmore in the Hyalites noted that the snowpack was still
collapsing with that good old "whuuump" sound above treeline where the wind had
affected the snow.  Ron was in the Beehive/Bear Basin areas near Big Sky and I
was down at Lionhead near West Yellowstone, and both of us felt the same way
about the snowpack.  Although neither of us noted any recent avalanche
activity, our stability tests showed the that the snowpack was still reasonably
unstable, and that buried layer of sugary snow and surface hoar from the
Christmas clear spell continues cause us headaches.  With last night's new snow
load, we've taken our already touchy snowpack and added additional weight to
it.  This is sure to increase the sensitivity of the snowpack.

With all that in mind, for today I'D CALL THE SNOWPACK INSTABILITY GENERALLY
HIGH ON SLOPES STEEPER THAN 35 DEGREES, AND MODERATE ON LOWER ANGLED SLOPES.
Regions with the greatest accumulations of recent snow (i.e., the Bridgers and
the Cooke City area) and all slopes with wind deposits of snow will be the most
sensitive places today.  The bottom line is this...it is unclear how much
weight it is going to take to get slides to release on that buried Christmas
weak layer.  I'm not sure if last night's storm was enough...but it is
certainly enough to make me nervous and to advise you to approach all steep
slopes with a healthy dose of caution today.

Don't forget that even during periods of moderate snowpack instability
avalanches are still possible and backcountry travelers have to use caution.

Advisories are issued every day of the week except on Tuesdays.  The next
advisory will be issued tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM.  If you have any recent
snowpack or avalanche information to pass on, please give us a call at
587-6984.  This advisory is also available on a recorded message at 587-6981 in
Bozeman, 838-2341 in Cooke City, and 646-7912 in West Yellowstone.  Advisories
are available on the Internet at http://www.avalanche-center.org/.