Burgundy Bowl

We skied into Burgundy Bowl on a northeast slope below Point 6. We triggered five or six very small wind slabs on steep rolls and experienced cracking in many locations. Snowpack tests about 15 feet away from one of these avalanches showed minimal signs of instability. Members of the public who skied a different northeast slope saw no signs of instability. This is a great example of spatial variability in avalanche problem distribution.

We also skied a south-facing slope, where new snow sat on a supportive crust, and we saw no signs of instability.

From the ridge, we looked into Murphy Bowl and saw a snowboarder-triggered wind slab avalanche in a gulley.

We triggered five or six very small wind slabs on steep rolls on a northeast slope. We experienced cracking in the surface snow throughout the run. Another party reported no cracking or collapsing on an adjacent northeast slope. We saw someone else trigger a size 1.5 wind slab on the NE-facing aspect of a gulley.

We dug on a northeast slope at 7900 feet and found layers of wind slab in the top 35 cms (14 inches) of snow. Wind slabs varied in hardness from four-finger to one-finger. We had a non-propagating extended column test within the windslabs (ECTN15 dn 10cm).

Below the wind slab layers, we found slightly softer (one-finger minus) mixed grain forms.

On a southeast aspect there was 30 - 45 cms (12 - 18 inches) of soft "right-side up" snow over a melt-freeze crust