Cornice failure avalanche
Purcells
mel-o-d , Friday 1st March, 2024 4:30PM
We approached the ridge with caution, snowboarder was practicing safe travel, sticking to the tree areas when attempting to push a small amount of cornice onto the Lee slope. It propagated up the ridge 70 meters or more.. 20 +m down the ridge from where the snowboarder was standing. The cornice failure picked up a fair amount of mass resulting in a sizeable avalanche. Cornice chunks up to the size of an oven. A lot of hang fire was left on this feature. The snow quality was dense deposited snow (4F- 1F). As per the picture, the run out of the avalanche stopped at the terrain feature 50 meters or so from the ridge top. We proceeded through the trees giving the cornice a wide birth. From the bottom we could see cracks that covered the whole ridge top. No one was injured or involved in the avalanche.
string(25) "Cornice failure avalanche"
string(25) "Cornice failure avalanche"
string(25) "Cornice failure avalanche"
string(25) "Cornice failure avalanche"
string(25) "Cornice failure avalanche"
Source: Avalanche Canada MIN