Avalanche: Foothills

Triggered a hard slab avalanche off the northwest face of Avenues Twin Peaks this morning. The snow is highly wind affected in the foothills right now, and I got careless given how thin and anchored the snowpack is in most places. The snow broke on faceted snow.

I was making my way down the northwest face of the peak, basically just traversing and doing kickturns given the mix of breakable crust, ice, and wind drifts and ended up on a very obvious wind slab on a ~35 degree slope. My second traverse on it I heard a whumpf/cracking sound and the snow around me fractured. Fortunately, the snowpack isn't very deep so I think I only got carried maybe 3-5ft on my side, very slowly, before I basically sunk down to the faceted snow and thus grippy snow below that and came to a stop using my skis and poles.

From where I stopped the crown was about 10ft above me and was anywhere from 1ft-2ft thick and went diagonal along the slope.

Forecaster Comments: Thank you for sharing the information. These are unusual conditions for the foothills and low elevations. My observation from the day after is HERE>

Hardesty