Gash Knob

We found spooky conditions today that were unusual for springtime in the backcountry. There is a thin layer of facets buried above a crust at the interface of the recent storm snow that produced a large, widely propagating avalanche. This persistent weak layer will take time to heal. 

There were 6 inches of new snow at upper elevations in the morning, and another 6 inches fell during the day today. The storm total since last Wednesday is around 2.5 ft as of this evening. 

It looks like a group remotely triggered a slide yesterday on the steeper roll below the Gash Knob trees. The slope they were on, which is where the normal skin track is, moved downhill 6 inches and then stopped. (Scary!) Around the corner, and a couple hundred feet away, where it's a little steeper, it released a D2 avalanche. The avalanche was on an ESE aspect at 7400 ft and failed on a thin layer of facets just above a crust at the interface of the recent storm snow. It was around 2 feet deep and around 200 feet wide. 

We dug a pit just uphill of the avalanche and found the culprit crust facet combo buried 2 feet deep. It produced propagating stability test results after hard taps (ECTP27). It was surprisingly less touchy in the pit, potentially because the layer had already collapsed when the avalanche occurred. We heard one decent whumpf, likely on the same layer, on a low-angle SE aspect at 6900 ft. 

The 12 inches of new snow was low density, and winds were calm even at upper elevations today. Significant dry loose avalanches were easy to trigger on steeper rolls, especially where the low density fresh snow rests on a crust.