Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- isolated
Intense snowfall all day, and steady moderate southerly winds with stronger gusts. Rapid loading occurring throughout the day. I remotely triggered several avalanches that failed simultaneously in adjacent starting zones. The largest was size D3, running to the bottom of the path and wiping out many trees as it did. I could hear snow moving and trees snapping for over a minute after I triggered these slides. The sounds were audible over the noise of the wind and the snow hitting my hood. It was raining steady up to at least 8,000' on my exit from the field shortly after sunset. Wet snow was easy to push into slides that quickly picked up steam on steep slopes. I only encountered this on steep cuts above the creek so slides remained small, but it would have been easy to make a large wet loose slide here. The early season facets have been and remain my primary snowpack concern. The presence of this layer is dictating where I will and won't travel. Sorry for the marginal photos, it was wet and hammering and visibility was poor so I had to crank the contrast.
Avalanche
- Size
- D3
- Type
- HS
- Count
- 3
- Aspect
- NW
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 10200 ft
This very large avalanche was remotely triggered from low angled terrain adjacent to a large alpine bowl. The slide involved a thick slab of December snow sitting over weak, early season facets that developed in late November. I was at ~9,600' when I triggered a massive collapse that propagated across several starting zones. This was the largest starting zone, the maximum crown elevation was around 10,200' and the debris ran to the bottom of the path at 8,400', knocking down many 20-30 year old trees as it did. Crown averaged 3.5-4 feet thick, with measured sections over 8 feet thick. Debris covered an estimated 7-8 acres. I could hear this avalanche running for over a minute after triggering it. There were two pulses of debris, an initial dry pulse and then a gouging wetter trough that tunneled into the dry debris. This avalanche would have been unsurvivable.