Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- specific
We left the Crystal parking lot at 8:00 am with plans to skin up to Dog Leg Chute, trying to take a lower-angle route to avoid overhead hazard from the likely storm slab as well as wind slabs on the ridge line. There was several feet of fresh, unconsolidated snow that was much deeper in certain wind drifted areas and the trees, making uphill travel difficult. At lower elevations, the snow was deep but did not display signs of instability. However, approximately ~200 feet below the ridge line, we started to notice some infrequent shooting cracks, as well as relative reactivity of the snow when performing ski cuts, although we were unable to trigger any slides only with a ski cut. There was evidence of both storm slab and wind slab problems at this elevation at N/NW aspects. We made the decision to skin across one of the larger, but lower angle slopes about 100 feet off the ridge line. Snow was breaking off in small slabs but was not propagating. We noticed large cornices on N/NW aspects and tried to avoid traveling underneath them. I skied a small chute/ramp on the N/NE aspect of the top of the peak, and on my first turn triggered a D 1.5 avalanche, crown ~50 feet, 6" depth, 200 foot runout. I was not caught in the slide but it rather ran next to me. We finished out the run without any further incident.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- N
- Elevation
- 6200 ft
On the uptrack under dog leg chute, noted that there had been a very large slide at some point likely in the last several days. We skinned up through the avalanche debris. A large tree (photo) had been destroyed in the avalanche. Smaller trees had been bent horizontally, with fresh snowfall at a horizontal angle.