Avalanche

Avalanche: Twin Lakes area

Charlie StokerSalt Lake
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Avalanche

Slab Width
30 m
Weak Layer
New Snow
Trigger Type
Skier
Vertical Fall
15 m
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Slab Thickness
10 cm
Trigger Detail
Remotely Triggered
Start Zone Aspect
Northeast
Avalanche Problem
New Snow

Observed this remotely triggered while skinning back to Brighton after a day of Backcountry 101 offered through the UAC. This was remotely triggered from about 10' off the ridge.

We observed widespread cracking and failures on test slopes throughout the day, with upside-down storm snow breaking 4"-5" down fairly easily. The NE facing pit we dug earlier produced ECT-N, but did not produce propagation (different wind direction and tree cover). We saw the cracking from where the two skiers are in this photo but didn't capture how wide it was until after we skied around and below it.

The big danger with this slide is that it would have deposited you right into a not-quite-frozen portion of Twin Lakes.

Sorry for the low quality photo. The snow was coming down heavily all day.