Persistent Slabs
- Hochgebirge
- Waldgrenze
- Unterhalb der Waldgrenze
- Wahrscheinlichkeit
- Possible
- Größe
- 3
In most areas the snowpack is slowly adjusting to all the recent storm snow and there's plenty of terrain that you can ride today and not trigger an avalanche. But remember- our snowpack is still in its infancy, its structure sketchy, and I consider it guilty until proven otherwise. Now here's where it gets tricky, as the pack gets stronger it lures us into steep terrain, often without incident, giving us a false sense of snowpack stability. However, all we need to do is find one weakness, maybe around a bush or rock that we can't see buried underneath the snow, collapse the pack, and now we're staring down the barrel of a scary avalanche. The way I'm avoiding this scenario is by simply avoiding the terrain where this setup exists.... mid and upper elevation, north facing slopes that harbored snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm. So there's no reason to pull on the avalanche dragons tail. Lose the old snow and you lose the problem.... done and done.
In the distance, the type of terrain where you could trigger an avalanche that breaks to old, weak snow near the ground.
Above, images of the bed surface and Ted's pit profile-
This slide broke close to the ground near a crust and weak snow that formed in October.
Weston D was in Smith-Moorehouse and found a suspicious structure in that zone as well. In addition, his crew experienced a "spooky, tree shaking collapse"... (see pit profile above).
