Quick report
No signs of instability before the avalanche, no new snow. Skies were clear, it was quite warm, there was a light ridgetop wind out of the SW. No results in hand pits. Overall stability was good, our thoughts from where the avalanche occurred was at that spot in particular, we noted no wind and it felt significantly warmer than it had been all day. We believe the slope was previously windloaded, and the slab broke on what would have been the interface of the old wind slab. We did not examine the interface before exiting. Both the debris and bed surface were saturated. Our takeaways were that we underestimated the solar input (and lack of cooling wind) on that slope. We were also not expecting to see previously windloaded snow on a S aspect given the winds this past week.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- S
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 9940 ft
We were skiing the S Face of Arden, traversing over to Bole. Snow had been wet, but we hadn’t seen any signs of instability and had skied multiple aspects already that day. While traversing, we had been trying to push on the wet snow to see if it would entrain, and had no entrainment. The skier in the front started traversing across a more connected, smooth surface piece of terrain. When they were about halfway across, the avalanche broke. The crown was about 10 feet above them, and they were carried about 100 vertical feet before arresting on the bed surface. The second skier was behind their partner to the south on a connected, smooth piece of terrain where the avalanche broke at their feet. They were able to arrest there. The crown was ~300 feet wide and 12-18 inches deep. The avalanche ran 600-700 vertical feet into a gully. We didn’t go down and probe the debris, but we’d guess it was about 1-2m deep. There were no injuries and we were able to exit via Maid of the Mist Basin.