Wortmans Creek, Island
Quick report
- Collapsing
- widespread
We remotely triggered an avalanche on a slope with more than 15 recent tracks and upwards of 20 old tracks.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 2700 ft
We remotely triggered a slide on the toe of the Island this afternoon. 24” crown, 200' wide, ran about 400’ vertical feet (to the bottom of the slope). There were 10 fresh heli tracks from today and a bunch of older tracks (20+?) from the last days/weeks. We were following an existing skin track up the steep slope at the bottom of the run. We were a party of 3. We were not following proper protocol and traveled up the slope together despite all of our party noting with pole probing that the snowpack did not feel inspiring. But the presence of so many tracks led us to be complacent. We had passed the steepest part of the slope (estimated 38degrees) and were skinning on low angle terrain (measured 29 degrees) 150 vertical feet above the convexity. We all heard and felt a significant collapse that was very widespread. This collapse triggered the avalanche on the slope we had just crossed. We were several hundred feet away from the crown. Upon inspection on the way down we discovered that the slab was ~24" thick, well below the penetration of any of the tracks (new or old). The bottom of the slab appeared to be a decomposed and faceted crust. The slab has a varying profile, lenses of pencil hard old sastrugi mixed with 1F - 4F snow. We found it difficult to gauge the amount of new snow from the last 48hrs, but our estimates are <6". The slab definitely involved old snow and old persistent weak layers.