Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Toured up Incline Peak on the "normal" skin track starting at about 6am. There were consistent strong winds and major amounts of wind transport occurring everywhere. Visibility was bad enough to make navigation difficult. After crossing the NE bowl and heading up the first steep band, I remotely triggered some extremely small storm slabs (3 inch crown) ontop of boulders. They failed on the boulders themselves from my skin track underneath them. Tight switchbacks on the skin track near tree wells caused deeper cracking, and I even saw some shooting cracks upwards of 30 feet in specific terrain (9000 ft, above 30 degrees, near tree wells, N facing) First lap was skied down the center of the bowl away from any of the obvious trigger points with no noticeable instabilities or releases. Second lap was skied to the left of the first lap closer to the skier's right chute. I was too close to those rocks and caused a D1 storm slab to release on the surface 6 inches or so. Seemed to be the same layer I saw cracking and minor releases in on the way up.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 9100 ft
Got a bit too close to the rocks that separate the skier's right chute from the center of the NE Bowl (these rocks and other rocks around Incline Peak are consistent trigger points), triggered a D1 storm slab. The crown appeared to be the surface 6 inches or so of the new storm snow similar to other failures seen on the approach.