Quick report
- Collapsing
- widespread
Live trees fell over with extreme gusts during our entrance into Bench on 1/12. Avalanches were actively occurring below the skin track. The snowpack had widespread collapsing that traveled longer distances during the trip as the snowpack settled more into a slab in more sheltered locations. We stuck to more conservative terrain with planar slopes topping out around 31* for about 200'. We had enough red flags adding up to ignore the results of our snow pits and stick to more simple terrain. The collapses we experienced were widespread but only carried only a few meters. Yesterday (1/15), the snowpack settled out, the ski pen was ~15 cm and collapses were traveling much further on SE slopes, roughly 15-20 meters.
Weather
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Recent Snowfall
- 55
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Where to start?! There were brutal winds and light snow during our walk into Bench Hut on 1/12. It was overcast the following day with brief periods of sun. It snowed 10 cm new on the evening of the 13th. We had periods of sun and wind on 1/14. The last day was mostly sunny with cold temperatures.
Snowpack
We dug many hand pits to find about 50-50cm since 1/6 throughout the middle elevations. Two east-facing snow pits around 8400' both had ECTX x 2 down 49cm on a thin layer of 2-3mm surface hoar with a thick layer of facets (15cm) below it. The facets were more likely to fail than the thin feathers, but neither is confidence inspiring! We had multiple collapses on site of the one snow pit and continued to receive collapses on the same skin track the following day.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Type
- U
- Count
- 3
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 8100 ft
I fear much of the bigger avalanche activity was covered by the winds and newer snow. The large avalanche on "Yurt Slide" was the most eye popping, because it may have been remote triggered by the nearby slope. William's Peak's south face had smaller piles of debris, but it appeared to be sluffing; I didn't make out any crown lines in my photos. The "white spider" had bigger piles but no visible crowns.