WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4th

Good morning this is Doug Chabot with your Gallatin National Forest
Avalanche Advisory issued on Wednesday, April 4th, at 7:30 am.  Gallatin
County Search and Rescue, funded by the taxpayers of this county, sponsors
today's advisory.  This is a backcountry avalanche advisory and doesn't
apply to the local ski areas.

                CURRENT CONDITIONS AND WEATHER DISCUSSION:

Overnight our mountains picked up 1-2 inches while the mountains around
Cooke City got closer to 4.  A fast moving stream of moisture from the
southwest is responsible for this, and I'm expecting another 1-2 inches,
mostly in the south, before this drifts east later this morning.
Consequently we'll be under mostly cloudy skies this morning with some
clearing by this afternoon.  Overnight ridgetop winds became more north to
southeast blowing at 10-20 mph with gusts reaching into the 30's.  These
winds should remain similar today with daytime highs once again hitting the
upper 20's.

                    SNOWPACK AND AVALANCHE DISCUSSION:

The Bridger Range:

In the Bridger's another inch of snow fell on top of the 8 they got
yesterday morning.  In general, the snowpack has adjusted well to this new
load, but there's enough funkiness out there to keep us on our toes.
Yesterday my partner and I went to Slushmans and were surprised at how
unstable the snow was.  On our way up we met a group descending who also
dug numerous pits and found similar instabilities; enough to have them turn
around and head for the car.  What spooked us the most was that our
snowpits and stability tests revealed easy and very clean shears under the
upper ice crust, about a foot down.  For you snow nerds out there our tests
results in several pits yielded Rutschblock scores of 2 and stuffblocks of
10, both with very clean shears that failed on a layer of small graupel
pellets.  Ok, before your eyes glass over, let me give it to you straight.
There are some weaknesses out there, most notably under the upper ice
crust.  This is not widespread, but there's enough of this around to
warrant extra caution.  I also expect that this layer will strengthen
quickly since these crystals typically don't persist long.  On another
note, the Bridger Bowl Ski Patrol reported avalanche activity confined to
the new snow.  There were also quite a few natural avalanches, but these
were in steeper wind loaded areas also restricted to new snow.  For today
I'd call the avalanche danger MODERATE on all slopes steeper than 35
degrees and LOW elsewhere.  So don't take anything for granted, look
around, dig lots of small pits and stay off of steep slopes that show any
sins of instability.

The Gallatin and Madison Ranges, the Lionhead area near West Yellowstone,
the mountains around Cooke City and the Washburn Range:

Most of the mountains picked up an inch or two overnight, which hasn't
added much stress to our snowpack.  The mountains around Cooke City
received a little more from this moist flow, but they too have a snowpack
strong enough to handle the weight of 4 more inches.  Winds have been
gusty, so you'll want to be on the lookout for any fresh wind slabs.  These
slopes will be under additional stress making the new snow more sensitive
to triggering.  The Big Sky Ski Patrol reported that under the cornices
some pockets of wind slabs pulled out, but these were generally isolated.
Obviously in areas such as Cooke City that had a little more snow you'd
want to use a stronger dose of caution, but in general our snowpack seems
to be stable.  Any avalanche activity would most likely be confined to the
new snow.  So you really don't have an excuse, except laziness, to not dig
down to see how this new snow is bonding to the older snow that's fallen in
the last few days.  For today I'd call the avalanche danger MODERATE on all
wind loaded slopes steeper than 35 degrees and LOW elsewhere.

Ron will issue the next advisory tomorrow morning. 

END