Quick report
Toured up to Relay Peak along the ridge above the east bowl. Dropped a couple cornices on the way up but say no signs of instability. We met up with 2 other people at the summit and talked about the stability, there were no cornices or obvious wind loaded features on the the Relay Peak ridge above the East Face, though there was decent amount of wind transported snow going into the face. We decided to ski one of the less steep lines on the lift side of the cliff band, and I ski cut the top of it. As I was traversing away, the slab released and propagated around 50ft to the left of where I dropped in, and the resulting avalanche ran about 300 feet. No one was carried, and I was able to quickly traverse away to a lower angle area. The slope that I ski cut was slightly convex at the top, and about 35 degrees. The crown was 6in, and we determined this was a storm slab avalanche, size D2.
No previous avalanches observed, no signs of instability from test slope.Weather
- Air Temp
- 30
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Recent Snowfall
- 15cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 10270 ft
Toured up to Relay Peak along the ridge above the east bowl. Dropped a couple cornices on the way up but say no signs of instability. We met up with 2 other people at the summit and talked about the stability, there were no cornices or obvious wind loaded features on the the Relay Peak ridge above the East Face, though there was decent amount of wind transported snow going into the face. We decided to ski one of the less steep lines on the lift side of the cliff band, and I ski cut the top of it. As I was traversing away, the slab released and propagated around 50ft to the left of where I dropped in, and the resulting avalanche ran about 300 feet. No one was carried, and I was able to quickly traverse away to a lower angle area. The slope that I ski cut was slightly convex at the top, and about 35 degrees. The crown was 6in, and we determined this was a storm slab avalanche, size D2.