Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- isolated
Our freshly buried weak layer is already creating brouhaha and instigating unique avalanche behavior: we noted impressive remote triggering despite very thin, very soft slabs (~8" of blower in wind sheltered terrain). Thin wind slabs were touchy in the alpine. Today's instabilities were quite sensitive but harmless in size. Trouble is on the horizon if it keeps snowing and slabs get thicker and more cohesive.
Shooting cracks were fairly common above 11,200, ranging from a few feet to over 50 feet with no obvious rhyme or reason to these differences other than that all of the instabilities were on slopes where the new snow fell on weak facets. Some of the shooting cracks remotely triggered little pockets in gullies. We heard a few audible collapses while crossing gullies that held old, thin, hard slabs from last week's winds.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- Below valley floor
- Recent Snowfall
- 15 to 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Light snowfall rates (S1) early afternoon increased to moderate (S2-3) closer to sunset. At 16:30, I measured 30 cm of low density new snow at 11,000' above Schofield Pass, and at 17:00, 15 cm in downtown Gothic. Pleasantly light west winds in the alpine, with only light drifting ATL and no drifting N/BTL.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 12200 ft
Remote triggered a couple of tiny storm slabs in steep gulley features NTL. In each of the few lightly drifted slopes that we approached ATL, we easily triggered thin soft slabs either remotely or by touching the slope with a ski pole.