Quick report
Went to Gulf of Slides to check out the natural avalanche activity from earlier this week. A large crown line from the Snowfields was visible from the road and there were reports of additional crown lines in similar aspects. Wanted to get eyes on the large crown in the lookers left side of the snowfield. Unfortunately, visibility became obscured so we descended from our high point which was about 100 feet short of the crown. We discussed that it appears that this avalanche stepped down into some of the deeper weak layers, you can see in the attached picture where you can see distinct layers. On the lookers right side of the Snowfields there was a very faint crown line visible. It looks like that area may have reloaded with wind deposited snow, but this was only observed from a distance. The snow appeared very smooth which was in contrast to most of the snow in the area that was scoured or old debris. isolated cracking was observed under skis on some kick turns where the surface snow depth was 3-4 inches. The cracking seems to be an isolated surface instability and any cracking observed did not have a lot of energy to it.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 18
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- Not Observed
- Recent Snowfall
- 2 cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Light north winds observed, cloud shifted to overcast and then obscured in our time in the terrain
Snowpack
The snow surface was very variable. We observed a lot of debris in the track of the lookers right side of the Snowfields. The depth in the track ranged from 3 inches to 4 feet in the areas that we measured. Also found some softer snow, 4F hand hardness, that was about 5 inches in depth and had a wind skin on top. The track was also full of avalanche debris and while I did not measure depth in the runout in the track found that depth ranged from 3 inches to 4 feet. In other places the surface was pencil hard and edge able and in a few places the bed surface was visible, very slick, and very difficult to skin on.