Quick report
- Aspect
- Southwest
- Elevation
- 3048 m
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>None.</p>
Hard to piece last Sunday's avalanche together owing to poor visibility and a week's worth of snow and wind. One theory is that the party triggered the avalanche on a facet/crust layer that propagated 100' wide that sympathetic'd another one 400' wide further down the ridge. These two avalanches were 8-14" deep running on facets below a crust (possibly Jan 15/16).
The second avalanche stepped down to the facet/crust layering leftover from New Year's.
Analysis - see snowpilot - offered mixed results of ECTP14 on facets below the NYear's crust....and ECTX. CTs, oddly, failed on facets above the NY crust.
Photos:
Upper avalanche that had such wide propagation and sympathetic slide
Upper avalanche and step down avalanche (estimated 1' deep and 50' wide?)
Profile
Skinning toward the Sundial
Snowpack
23Jan rime crust just a couple mm thick. Noted but not affecting ski quality. Warmth and few inches of snow probably inhibit any development of weaknesses adjacent to crust.
Warm and wet; rollerballs and push-alanches in the elevation norths.