Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
We dug 2 pits on a south/southeast facing slope @ 9,800’. Snow depth was 145cm. Weather was fair. Broken clouds. Felt/heard settling/whoomphing in drainages and on moderate slopes. Hand hardness tests showed several buried crust layers at 70cm and 90cm above ground level and weak faceted snow at the base. In Pit 1 we failed the pack at each of those crust layers in a compression test and saw sudden results and propagation at the 70cm layer in our extended column test. In Pit 2 just a couple meters away, we saw sudden failure and propagation at the base. We verified that base failure 3 times with the same result each time. Results would show that a human triggered avalanches are possible and consequences would be large.