Avalanche

Avalanche: The Ice Box

MACSalt Lake
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Avalanche

Slab Width
152 m
Trigger Type
Natural
Vertical Fall
305 m
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Slab Thickness
61 cm
Start Zone Aspect
North
Avalanche Problem
Wind Slab
Start Zone Elevation
2804 m

Skinning up Main Porter to gauge the damage from the last storm, and we saw that the area between Icebox proper and Gary's (We call it Bunch of Rocks because, well, if you've seen it during the summer, it's wall-to-wall rocks) imploded over the weekend. This is a repeater slide: the same area slid big in late December (report here). This time it ran even longer than the last time: 1000 feet and a few hundred feet wide. It doesn't appear to have stepped down into deeper layers, and didn't leave a big pile: just a long path of debris that will be an unpleasant bed of large chunks of ice soon.

It isn't clear what sparked the slide but given the gargantuan cornices still guarding Sox's to the east, as well as some corniced sentinels still standing guard over Icebox proper, my guess is that one or more cornices decided to cannonball the run. It goes without saying that it wouldn't be pleasant to be around when more of those cornices decide to drop. (PS While Gary's will likely have smaller cornices, it will have the same wind-loading given the last week of winds from the southwest/west. Worth keeping in mind....