Quick report
Beautiful sunny day in the Middle Fork. Up high on the Flathead crest, winds were moving and transporting snow, which made terrain management fickle on one upper elevation N aspect in particular, resulting in a rider triggered avalanche. However, beyond that instance, there were zero signs of instability, cracking, collapsing. Our big takeaway is that wind honestly just does what it wants and can be really hard to read at times, which can lead to murky decision making on ‘greenlight’ days. Surfaces ridden were all types of pow, windboard, breakable crusts, facety sugar… it’s all out there.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- AR
- Elevation
- 7000 ft
D1 wind slab avalanche (2-3”) on the steepest portion of a line on N facing terrain. Rider saw cracking above and in front of them before the slab released, rider was able to self arrest and let the slide go down the constriction beneath them.