Seattle Ridge

We got out to get eyes on a bigger area of Seattle Ridge than we have seen so far this season. Although there was plenty of debris to be seen in the aftermath of last weekend's storm, we did not see any new avalanches form the past few days. We found signs of unstable snow on one isolated slope just below the headwall on the front side of Seattle Ridge. We also rode several of the back bowls and did not see any other signs of concern.

For those of you checking the weather station data, we removed the rime from the wind sensor, but the internal parts are damaged. For now you should assume the wind data being reported is much lower than what is actually occurring.

We experienced one collapse as I rode up to a pit Graham was digging. This was a previously wind-scoured aspect on a northeast slope just below ridgeline at 3030'.

We looked for a thin spot to test the weak snow that was buried over the past two weeks, and we found what we were looking for. We dug on a slope where the total snowpack was only 3' deep, and the most recent storm snow was about 2' deep. This was about 100 yards from an adjacent slope where the snowpack was over 12' deep. We felt a collapse on the slope with the thin snowpack and got unstable test results (ECTP15) on a layer of well-developed (1-2mm) dry facets just below a thin rime crust. We also dug just on the other side of the ridge, where the snowpack was about 8' deep and got no concerning results.

It is unlikely our unstable slope is representative of the Turnagain Pass area in general, although there probably is similar alpine terrain in the area that may produce a large avalanche.