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Healy Pass - Prime avalanche conditions

bryanmcgregor02, Tuesday 23rd January, 2024 12:30PM
We chose healy pass as it is our go to for considerable days as you can mostly avoid avalanche terrain (aside from the 3 runouts that must be passed on the trail in). We dug a pit on a southern representative aspect with a slope of about 26 degrees. We immediately noticed some very concerning layers in the snowpack. About 30cm of harder snow sitting on two separate facet layers. We got propagation on ect 10. With this in mind we stayed out of steep terrain and went to test our suspicions in low consequence terrain. On our uptrack towards healy pass peak we experience some of the largest whumpfing we've ever experienced, and it was a constant on the entire uptrack. We noted that the intensity of the whumpfing was correlated pretty strongly to the slope angle and if there were any nearby convexities. We were able to clearly hear the whumpf travel upslope as the upper layer collapsed on the weaker lower layers. In my opinion skiing avalanche terrain with these conditions would absolutely be a dice roll, and probably not in your favor. We will be waiting for natural avalanche cycles (or time) to settle these problem layers before we consider skiing any avalanche terrain.

Location: 51.09558000 -115.84184000