Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Skiing down the south face above gold chord lake from the saddle at the south end of pinnacle valley. Triggered a slab approx 30 ft x 30 ft x 8"-20" deep - average probably 14". Collapsed on facets in thin snow, trigger point near rock on skiers right of the photos, while doing a right footed turn. Felt a collapse at the beginning of the turn, and at the end felt the slab moving, but was able to ski off it. However, it gained momentum quickly, and entrained a lot snow on the way down, nearly reaching Gold Chord Lake itself, exposing a nasty rocky bedsurface. There was a whumpf felt by other group members near the top of the ridgeline earlier, but the group did not think anything of it, due to assumption it was isolated. Reminder is, small avalanches can have disastrous results in terrain made abnormally consequenstial due to low snow. There were 3 tracks down that chute, partially filled in with wind effected snow. We also skied NW facing aspects in pinnacle valley.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Aspect
- SW
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 4200 ft
2 avalanches in the Gold Cord lake area happened today. Some skiers passed by us and said they had just triggered a persistent slab avalanche on their ascent, crown about 8” deep. Then minutes later we observed another avalanche in motion. Details unknown but seemed like a small dry loose or small slab released and then triggered a larger persistent slab avalanche that failed near the ground. This all happened moments after a pit we dug below Murphy Bench that had an ECTP17 result on the facets 30cm above the ground.