Eddies

We focused our tour around a crown investigation of the recent skier trigger avalanche that occurred on March 9th. The crown had been blown in by roughly 15cm of new snow. We dug out the blown-in snow and were able to find a clearly defined fracture line. Our crown profile investigation revealed that the avalanche fractured along the Valentine's Day surface hoar and rounds interface roughly 50 cm down from the snow surface. We found the Valentine's Day buried surface hoar lying down, fragmented, and rounded. We believe that the skier found a shallower wind-scoured trigger point on a steeper rollover feature that triggered the avalanche. 

The debris pile blocks at the upper bench of the avalanche were roughly the size of a microwave. However, the avalanche appeared to have cascaded down onto the benches below and ran close to the creek at the base of the valley. The debris pile blocks at the bottom of the run were much later larger than the debris pile blocks at the beginning of the run. The debris pile blocks at the base of the run were close to a meter thick (which is where the previous 3/9 observation suggested how deep the buried surface hoar was in this specific location). 

We observed no collapsing and no whoomphing. We were spooked by how large the skier trigger avalanche was with little warning signs so stuck to lower angle terrain that was not connected to any larger faces or bigger slopes.