Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
The snow on the skin up was incredibly thin and mixed with plenty of grass and brush from the road to about treeline. At treeline it shifted to more of a patchy mix of crust, windboard and grass/rocks. It was not until the upper reaches, about where the avalanche started, that the crust and windboard became more hollow and collapsed. Up until that point, my concern for the outing was the terrible snow conditions for skiing, not the potential for avalanche. I did not do a snowpit analysis. There was no more than a trace of new snow in the preceding 10 days. However, the Peak 3 weather station recorded high winds the night prior, including gusts up to 60mph.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Type
- HS
- Aspect
- NW
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 3700 ft
While skinning up the upper face of Peak 3 I witnessed a slab avalanche break off and run roughly 1,000 vertical feet down the gulley. The crown of the avalanche, from my vantage point, appeared to be potentially 2 or 3 feet at its highest and as wide as maybe 100 meters. It started just below "Bail Out Rock," which is located high on the final ridgeline that runs east to west from the Peak 3 summit. I was climber's right of the slide path by roughly 50 meters when it passed me and probably 200 vertical feet below the crown. There were two other skiers on the mountain at the time. They were above and climber's left of me. The avalanche appeared to propagate from the first skier when he crossed the open face from climber's left to right. He was entrained in the slide and rode it all the way down till it stopped maybe 100 vertical feet above tree line near "Tax Day Rock." He remained on top of the slide, was not buried and physically unhurt. His partner was not caught by the slide.