Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
11/29: ventured up towards Fairy Lake at 06:00 before the road closed for the season. We were met with about 30 cm of new snow and isolated areas with ~45 cm. The temperatures were cold, with wind chills likely well below -10 F and E/SE winds of about 10-15 mph. On the approach, we observed isolated areas with widespread cracking and collapsing, with cracks extending out ~75 ft. We descended down the twin pomp where we observed several areas of instability, including one D1.5 storm slab and one D2.5 wind slab, which caught and carried a skier (see avalanche report for details). The snowpack seems to be very stable below treeline, but very unstable above and near treeline. Below treeline, we did observe small point release incidents, but nothing large enough to be problematic to riders.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2 R2
- Type
- HS
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 8500 ft
Skiing the Pomp twins couloir, skier 1 began riding the bottom section after the curve and found a drastic change in snow quality as the aspect shifted. The Snow became heavily wind-affected, and as skier 1 made a turn on a slightly convex feature, it broke roughly a meter above and propagated ~150ft across. Skier 1 was carried ~250ft down, deployed his airbag, and managed to stay on top with no injuries, and managed to dig himself out. The crown appeared to be approximately 35-40 cm deep.