Avalanche: Mt Aire

Headed up to Mt Aire thinking the snowpack would be much more stable at lower elevations, I was wrong. We actually triggered 2 separate slides both on N facing terrain between 7000-8000ft in elevation. When we got above 7000ft it became apparent that there was a really dense slab resting on a few inches of facets with a hard melt-freeze crust underlying it. The slab was about a foot deep and was created by real dense warm snow and wind. Some of the windslabs were so dense that you wouldn't break through on skis, and in some wind loaded areas the slab was well over 2 feet deep.

We noticed this upside down hollow feel at about 7000ft and dug a hole, the slab released on isolation so we were on our toes from then on. We triggered the first slide remotely from the ridge from about 20ft away, got a collapse and a crack propagated about 20ft then released the avalanche that I gave dimensions on. Farther up the ridge we got another collapse and remotely triggered another slide from about 100ft away. The snowpack on the polar side of the compass was really sensitive, we were experiencing shooting cracks the whole way up the ridge proper on Mt Aire. I would assume with more loading things might get a little wild and start releasing naturally without a trigger.