Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
It was quite foggy but we the crew there had a decent hold of the situation and patrol just observed/spotted the crew as they self-extricated up the Scotty's Slide boot pack.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 18
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 23
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Light snow and fog all day with light West and SW winds.
Snowpack
We dug above the avalanche on a similar aspect but above a cliff band in a more wind-affected area but it should be fairly analogous. Our HS was 130 cm, with ECT scores of ECTP 19 @ 45 cm and ECTP 25 @ 45 cm from the ground. To me the reactive layer seemed to be the persistent layer (I believe it was an old Surface Hoar/Near Surface Facets layer that was buried on Dec 8, and had some wind loading on top (I observed lots of very small rounded grains (wind packed rounds) above the weak layer) and then the 30+" of snow since Dec 15 on top. We were able to observe a few 3mm SH pieces and some rounding 1mm facets.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2 R2
- Type
- HS
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 9500 ft
A group of 10 visiting skiers were skiing some terrain that they had scoped on previous trips. The were in some pretty serious terrain and when one of them aired into the slope, they tumbled, triggered the slide, it made an audible rumble, they pulled their airbag and ended up partially buried. The vis was pretty terrible so it was hard to get good photos but the debris pile ran into the flats.