Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Recent avalanche and persistent weak layer top the list of red flags today. </p>
Got a few photos of this recent avalanche on Double Hill and wanted to try and learn something. My guess is it was triggered low on the slope or adjacent to the slide, I did not see any tracks on top of the ridge, but the wind may have drifted over any tracks. I dug a pit off on the shoulder and had an ECTP 27 score and this is where the snow pack is over 100 cm deep. Down near the bottom of the slope there is less snow and the weak sugary snow is much easier to find and very weak.
There is very weak sugary snow down near the bottom of Double Hill and these sled tracks are a good place to quickly dig down and find the weak November faceted snow. It's possible that this avalanche was triggered down in this area where the weak snow is more easily affected. There is a lot of volume of snow with this avalanche as the debris is quite deep where the slope has a couple benches and transitions and some of the debris traveled down below the first hill of Double Hill.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The persistent weak layer is still a player out there with a recent human triggered slide yesterday. It might be getting a little harder to activate the weak sugary snow where the snow depth is deeper, but where the snow pack is still shallow and weak it is still possible to trigger a decent size avalanche. </p>
Hard to tell for sure how much new snow from Wednesday with all the strong winds, but maybe 8-10" of nice medium density snow that continues to ride well and add to the great base out there.