Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>With so much new snow over the past couple of days, we were a bit surprised to observe no cracking or collapsing in the new snow. Again, not until we entered terrain where wind was a factor did we see any sign of instability, and today, only in the top 3" without much propagation.</p>
Today, we traveled up Porter Fork to the Raymond Glade, with an objective to look at the new snow through all the elevation bands. While much of our travel was through wind sheltered terrain, we did not find any instabilites in the new snow until we reached 9,200ft where we found two recent avalanches on the steep, wind-loaded, north-facing terrain into the run Paradise. One was apparently a natural avalanche with a crown of 18-24" and about 100' wide. A second avalanche appeared to be a skier triggered slide that was roughly 100-150' wide, about 2' deep and looked to have failed on the new/old snow interface. We dug a pit near the crown and got an ECTP22 about 60cm down failing on some 0.5mm facets. It looks like the party that triggered the slide was able to safely ascend back out to the ridge. If you trigger an avalanche in the backcountry, please let us know, we would love to hear more.
Snowpack
Around 9,500ft thethe new snow settled out to about 20". Trailbreaking was reasonable and riding conditions were top-notch.