Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Despite lousy structure as we climbed into near treeline terrain, the snowpack was surprisingly quiet until we remotely triggered a D2 in Birthday bowl. We made a plan to descend the recent bed surface of Thanksgiving Bowl, and stuck to it, avoiding steep slopes where the snowpack remains intact until we descended to an elevation where the slabs diminished, below about 10,500'
One small collapse near ridgeline. Then a large collapse that pulled out a portion of Birthday Bowl remotely.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- Trace
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Increased wind speeds were transporting light amounts of snow on several alpine slopes
Snowpack
ECTP results at 10,500 (after cutting through a 3 cm rain crust). ECTN results at 11,300 on a similar structure but with thicker slab and negligible crust. See pits.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 11400 ft
Remotely triggered a large persistent slab avalanche from flat terrain above Birthday Bowl. The avalanche failed about 18" deep on small-grained facets just above the Christmas crust. There was a fresh persistent slab on the SE facing bowl of Baldy (Rock Creek). That slope was skied by a few folks yesterday, and was reportedly accidentally triggered by a group of skiers in the same terrain today.