Avalanche
- Slab Width
- 18 m
- Weak Layer
- New Snow/Old Snow Interface
- Trigger Type
- Skier
- Vertical Fall
- 152 m
- Avalanche Type
- Soft Slab
- Slab Thickness
- 30 cm
- Trigger Detail
- Unintentionally Triggered
- Start Zone Aspect
- Southeast
- Avalanche Problem
- Wind Slab
- Start Zone Elevation
- 2804 m
Beautiful day in the mountains. Headed out in a group of 4. Skied a run on little water, a few laps on toms, and then headed up to Reynolds. We had a lot of westerly wind on top, which made us feel more confident about skiing the east face. We debated back and forth and ended up skiing the first part of the face and then making our way over to the ridge on the skiers right. There were a few drifts of cross loaded snow on the north side of the ridge, one of which broke off about 40 feet in front of the first skier and caused an avalanche that slid down around 500 vertical feet. The debris didn't look that deep, maybe 2 feet at most, but since there were a few more drifts, we skied the ridge down and never got a great angle to capture a great picture of the avalanche.
Even though this avalanche probably wouldn't have buried someone, it would have dragged someone through a ton of bushes and wouldn't have been fun to be caught in. It was totally avoidable and was a great lesson about how complex and dangerous wind loading can be.
Same avalanche by Alex on Mount Reynolds, clarifying the location and aspect of the avalanche. I was also in his party.
Forecaster Notes: There is a chance this avalanche failed on a crust associated with facets. However the reporting party said they did not check out the bed surface. For what it's worth they did find a crust about 3-4 inches below the surface on similar aspects above the slide.