Soldier & Wood River Valley Mtns

Problèmes avalancheux

• 

  Persistent Slabs

  N

  NE

  E

  SE

  S

  SW

  W

  NW

  • Alpin
  • Limite forestière
  • Sous la limite forestière

  Probabilité

  Possible

  Taille

  2–3

  It's possible to trigger a large, destructive, Persistent Slab avalanche. These slides would fail on persistent weak layers, including crusts + facets on sunnier slopes and facets or surface hoar on shadier slopes. Yesterday, Scott's snowpack test in Croy Canyon returned an unstable test result on a layer of buried surface hoar. On Wednesday, I found a similar surface hoar layer on Peak 2 in the Soldiers. You can reduce your risk by avoiding steep, rocky, heavily wind-affected terrain on the N half of the compass. Here, the combination of stiff slabs and thin areas of the snowpack make avalanches easier to trigger.

  Persistent Slab avalanches can release in surprising ways. You can trigger them from flat or low-angle terrain long distances away from steep slopes, and they can break far above you. Before triggering an avalanche, you may not experience snowpack collapsing or other obvious signs of instability.