Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Today we traveled through exposed avalanche terrain on west, north and east aspects between 7,000 and 9,600 feet on Treasure Mountain and observed a wide variety of conditions. On our ascent of the west facing Eddington Chutes area, we noticed wind slab formation beginning about 500 above Eddington Canyon. Hasty hand pits revealed a few inches of harmless wind slab on yesterday's solar crust, then 12-14 inches of cohesive storm slab sitting on the stiff and supportive solar crust from Friday the 14th. We pulled this slab off an isolated column easily and the shear was clean, which quickly forced us into heavily treed terrain for the remainder of the ascent. On the east face there was widespread wind loading just off the ridge top, but dropping in from a lower point on the ridge mitigated this problem, and for the remainder of the next three 1500' descents we found nothing but stable medium density powder. On slopes steeper than 40 degrees dry loose avalanches of harmless magnitude released easily. On the north face we experienced the same stable high-quality powder, leading us to conclude that the solar interface from Friday the 14th seems to pose the largest threat for slab avalanches. Today we traveled through exposed avalanche terrain on west, north and east aspects between 7,000 and 9,500 feet on Treasure Mountain and observed a wide variety of conditions. Strong morning winds appeared to be coming from the E/NE, loading our westerly ascent, but had variance/swirling. Temps were cold for the entire day, no sun, and about 2-6 inches of 24hr snowfall. On our ascent of the west facing Eddington Chutes area, we noticed wind slab formation beginning about 500 above Eddington Canyon. Hasty hand pits revealed a few inches of harmless wind slab on yesterday's solar crust, then 12-14 inches of cohesive storm slab sitting on the stiff and supportive solar crust from Friday the 14th. We pulled this slab off an isolated column easily and the shear was clean, which quickly forced us into heavily treed terrain for the remainder of the ascent. On the east face there was widespread moderate wind loading just off the ridge top, but skiing in from a lower point on the ridge mitigated this problem, and for the remainder of the next three 1000' descents we found nothing but stable medium density powder. On slopes steeper than 40 degrees dry loose avalanches of harmless magnitude released easily. On the north face we experienced the same stable high-quality powder, leading us to conclude that the solar interface from Friday the 14th seems to pose the largest threat for slab avalanches. Below 8,000 feet the snow transitioned to an unpleasant but manageable cocktail of zipper crust and wind board,
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 9000 ft
Dry loose avalanche that entrained recent snowfall on a 40 degree east facing slope. Ran about 100 feet. Largely harmless.