Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Wet day in the mountains of west central Idaho. We felt fortunate to be able to ride snowmobiles above the rain line and start skinning. Snowing consistently all day with 3-5 inches of accumulation. Tough visibility with blowing snow, flat light, gogged foggles 🤔, and lots of wind whales to toss you around. We took a few laps into the more wind sheltered terrain that feeds into convex type roll overs near the bottom that had heavier dense moisture laden new snow. We were in an heightened awareness of this added complexity and were traveling cautiously in anticipation of any activity. During lap 2, in such a spot, during one turn cutting away from the danger we triggered a 6-8 inch slab (likely all the new snow since solstice Sunday) that shot out towards the cliff. It was not a surprise, no one was caught, and we felt safe with the micro terrain feature and situation we were in. We took another lap in similar terrain before crying uncle and bailing as our base layers had become fully saturated. Not sure if the forecasters can add landslides as a problem or not but snowmobilers should be aware of a rockslide at clough pt. that had covered a portion of the groomed road. With how hard it was raining on exit, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more “fallen rock” as the road sign says in the next few days. Hopefully Santa and his reindeer can deliver some cold air for Christmas 🤞
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 7900 ft