Avalanche
- Slab Width
- 61 m
- Weak Layer
- New Snow/Old Snow Interface
- Trigger Type
- Snowboarder
- Vertical Fall
- 30 m
- Avalanche Type
- Hard Slab
- Slab Thickness
- 30 cm
- Trigger Detail
- Remotely Triggered
- Start Zone Aspect
- East
- Avalanche Problem
- Wind Slab
- Start Zone Elevation
- 2835 m
Today was a little crazy. After a really quiet and uneventful day snowboarding yesterday with no signs of any avalanches or instabilities, we rolled in to our zone of the day this morning with a little more confidence than a considerable day may have warranted. As we crested the ridge top near our target of the day the west wind was blasting and swirling. As we popped on to the ridge from the west and looked along the cornice line to the south the whole ridge broke loose. This slab was all super sensitive wind deposit. Probably 12" deep at its deepest and around 200' wide. There wasn't much of a slope for it to get moving on so it only ran 100ish vert.
Sooo, we were immediately back on our "A" game.
We dropped down to the next spot to take a look and noticed a couple of more ridgetop fractures and small slides, probably remote triggered by us since they looked very fresh. At this point we opted for the conservative route and thought we'd test out a small rollover (with speed) on our boards. It also broke and ran a short distance.
We ended up keeping it quite mellow for the day. Over and over we broke out wind slab after wind slab. All small and manageable. Our main concern was that the wind slab would step down into the deeper instabilities. Thus the choice of mellow slopes. This was by far the most eventful day we've seen in a long time.
On the way out, however, we noticed snowmo tracks everywhere... High marks under cornices and big lines with no consequences. We only saw one other small wind slab that popped out near the Naomi trail. I think a lot of people got very lucky today.