Small Avalanche in Night N’ Gale Ice Climbing Gully

<p>Avalanche in Night n’ Gale Gully 19FEB: Fun day today (to say the least) climbing Night n’ Gale up at Bridge River. Ice conditions were great and pretty fat for the approach pitch and the climb itself. Snow was light and consistent for most of the day coming down at about 0.1cm or so an hour, as forecasted. Winds were light at the car and nonexistent after that. Temps were warm as usual recently at about 3 degrees at the car. Creek was still knee high. Avy report was low below treeline, moderate at treeline, and significant above treeline with wind slabs and deep persistent slabs as avy problems. After completing the climb, about 1/4 of the way down the the approach gully while downclimbing the low angle snow and ice we heard a low rumble and then were enveloped in white. We both jumped to the side of the gully as a natural D1 (size1) avalanche swept down it for about 10 seconds. My partner, Ben, took shelter behind a rock while I was able to grab a small sapling on the side of the gully as snow hit me. I was not knocked off my feet thankfully. We were both unhurt. As we subsequently descended we saw that the avalanche had scoured the 8cm or so of snow in the center of the gully the entire 500m or so down it to its base where old avy debris had piled up. Small ice steps that were previously covered with snow were scoured down to bare ice. By the size of the debris and our experience in it I judged the avalanche to be about a D1 (size 1), relatively small and unlikely to fully bury somehow. However, given the terrain we’re lucky we were not swept off our feet and carried down the gully. It could have swept us over the 40m high or so approach WI3 pitch or further, which would have been very bad. We were fortunate to not be in the center of the gully when the avalanche happened. We are almost certain the avalanche originated above a mangy ice pitch off to climber’s left about 100m or so above the approach WI3 pitch. We were not far below that when it happened. It did not originate above the Night N’ Gale ice about 100m more up the gully. We theorize that perhaps the snow from the avalanche was building up on the ice above the mangy ice pitch until the slick ice allowed it to slide off relatively easily. It could have easily originated higher on the mountain than that though; we don’t know for sure. I circled in red on the picture below the ice pitch off the the side of the main gully where we believe the avalanche came from. At the end of the day we were frightened, humbled, and embarrassed by what happened. Part of us thought we should have known better than to be in that gully today but part of us thought we read the avy forecast correctly and were alert to any signs or warnings of unstable snowpack. Regardless, it was a close call and we took it as a lesson to learn from and swore to be more careful in the future. Let this be a lesson for us all.</p>

Weather Conditions

Cloudy, Warm, Wet.