Lawine

Avalanche: Red Baldy

mark whiteSalt Lake
Auf der Karte ansehen

Quick report

Slope Angle
40°

Avalanche

Slab Width
30 m
Weak Layer
Facets
Trigger Type
Skier
Vertical Fall
30 m
Avalanche Type
Hard Slab
Slab Thickness
91 cm
Trigger Detail
Remotely Triggered
Start Zone Aspect
North
Avalanche Problem
Wind Slab
Start Zone Elevation
3048 m

I triggered this windslab avalanche on the steep moraine roll over at the bottom of Red Baldy. On the walk up we noted 3 wind slab avalanches that had recently run naturally on the steep N facing roll overs on the approach and the wind was cranking from the S-SW moving a ton of snow on to leeward slopes and cross loading others. Figured I'd trigger a slide on this slope but didn't think It would be remotely triggered from well over 60ft away, thought I was going to have to tease the cat a little more. All these windslabs were running on near surface facets probably formed during the last few clear cold nights. The crown was over 4 ft deep at the deepest and probably averaged around 2ft, and the debris was hard slab. It was obvious that Red Baldy and the Tri Chutes were getting cross loaded and the Birthday Chutes were just getting straight up wind loaded, the amount of snow moving around up high was impressive. I did a quick pit on the side of one of these windslabs and it failed on isolation on NSF. Photos are the slide I triggered, a few others we passed on the way up, a video of the slide, wind and the hasty pit