Persistent Slabs
- Alta quota
- Limite del bosco
- Sotto il limite del bosco
- Probabilità
- Possible
- Dimensione
- 3
Sunday's close call is a firm reminder that it is still winter in the high-country, and although the chances of triggering a big slide are still possible. These riders got lucky with only one of their rigs getting buried -- Thanks to Jake and his crew for sharing their first-hand report for all of use to learn from, check it out here.
It's straight up tricky out there, and heres why. Our persistent weak layer is becoming more stubborn by the day, but continues to produce avalanches. That being said, the likelihood of triggering this avalanche problem is going down -- This is the good news. On the flip side, we are not out of the woods yet and poor structure exists in isolated mid and upper elevation terrain where a 2-4' slab overlays weak and sugary faceted snow from the Dry January Spell. We can trench multiple sets of tracks on a slope without incident, but all we need to do is find a weakness where the slab and weak layer are susceptible to our additional weight as a rider, maybe around a rock or a bush, collapse the pack, and now we have triggered an avalanche big enough to ruin our day.
My go-to and only tool for this set-up is avoidance. Steep, rocky, shallow slopes on the north half of the compass that are complex and have a lot going on are still off the table -- I can not outsmart this problem, so avoidance is my go-to tool for this dragon.
Above are a few other angles of the slide on Duchesne Ridge that produced SUV-size chunks of debris stacking up deep in the runout and trees below. Getting caught up in a slide like this could potentially be game over -- Trees turn to baseball bats, and debris chunks like boulders coming down on top of you.
