Quick report
- Slope Angle
- 37°
Avalanche
- Slab Width
- 53 m
- Weak Layer
- Facets
- Trigger Type
- Skier
- Avalanche Type
- Hard Slab
- Slab Thickness
- 152 cm
- Trigger Detail
- Remotely Triggered
- Start Zone Aspect
- North
- Avalanche Problem
- Persistent Weak Layer
- Start Zone Elevation
- 2530 m
I was out on a ridge walk today and triggered this large hard slab avalanche from a distance. I was about 200' down the ridge, when I set off a large collapse on a fairly flat area. A deep crack propagated up and down the ridge for quite some distance, and although I didn't immediately see or hear any other collateral damage, I was suspicious of the large slide path starting where the Syncline trail wraps around the ridge separating Dry and Logan canyons. When I skinned back up the ridge I saw that nearly the entire bowl above this slide path had released, between about 3 and 7 feet deep. From a distance, it appeared to release initially and cleanly on the facets near the ground, with no intermediate interfaces playing a role. It looks like this starting zone was loaded heavily from wind ripping across the far NW end of the Folly; 100 meters away on a windward aspect, there was less than a foot of snow total. There were numerous deep cracks shooting across the relatively low-angle section of the ridge, but ultimately the avalanche released a bit lower and didn't quite 'pull the carpet out'. Because of this, there was a lot of hangfire remaining, so I didn't attempt to check out the bed surface below the crown.
Photo 4 shows the location of the remote trigger, about 200 feet down the ridge and WNW of the crown.