Quick report
- Slope Angle
- 35°
Avalanche
- Slab Width
- 46 m
- Weak Layer
- New Snow/Old Snow Interface
- Trigger Type
- Natural
- Vertical Fall
- 152 m
- Avalanche Type
- Soft Slab
- Slab Thickness
- 91 cm
- Start Zone Aspect
- Northeast
- Avalanche Problem
- Wind Slab
- Start Zone Elevation
- 3109 m
Observed natural avalanche cycle from overnight. Best guess is this was a wind-loaded snow avalanche that failed on new/old snow interface. If it did step down deeper to older facets it had been filled in by the time we observed these avalanches. A snowpit on a nearby north facing slope at 10,000' showed 5' of snow with 2 faceted layers. One at the new/old interface and one about 1' off the ground. It was hard to gauge exact width, but we observed three different avalanches that could have been easily connected a few hundred feet wide and ran anywhere from 400 to 600 hundred vertical feet. What was interesting was that the crown faces were approximately 30-40' below the ridgetops, which leads us to believe it was a wind-loaded avalanche from strong winds.
We observed multiple instances of cracking and collapsing, including long reaching visible cracks just below the ridgeline.