Railroad Pass Fatal avalanche

The failure plane was a subtle interface layer of rounding Surface Hoar 4-5mm mixed with decomposing fragments sitting on a pencil hard layer with 40cm of 1 Finger snow above and 30cm of Fist to 4F snow on top of that.

Pemberton SAR along with CARDA and RCMP dog teams responded this morning to a report received late Monday of two missing / overdue snowbikers from near Railroad Pass on the Hurley FSR. Information provided by various parties indicated the incident probably occurred before noon on Monday. Upon reaching the scene snow bike tracks were seen entering but none leaving a slab avalanche on an open planar slope on a west aspect at 1650m. A large portion of the avalanche debris was funnelled through some small trees and into a gulley terrain trap feature. The deceased subjects were located by beacon and dog search buried between 50 and 100cm.