Avalanche

Avalanche: Mt Olympus

AbbottSalt Lake
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Avalanche

Slab Width
24 m
Vertical Fall
152 m
Start Zone Aspect
North
Start Zone Elevation
2256 m

Observed several small natural sluffs as we neared the top this morning. At about 10:45am we heard what we thought might be an avalanche, but chalked it up to plane noise.

Sure enough, on our descent we found that all the rocks up high had shed their snow, leaving the midsection of the couloir full of large, icy chunks of avy debris. Could have been a bad day had we started hiking up just a few minutes later.

We had bailed on our first objective due to warm temps, the slide means our backup plan wasn’t the best choice either. Keep a heads up mindset and choose your terrain carefully this spring.