Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Touring up to Pyramid, down its north face, and out Banana ended up being a great day out in the mountains, with some quality powder skiing on a consolidated feeling snowpack. Our biggest concern of the day was the wind slab problem from the previous day’s wind event, but the areas of concern were either hard enough to support us on skis (towards the summit of Pyramid) or small enough that they were not sliding (elsewhere) even as we jumped on them and tried to get to slide. The fresh snow from the 2/15 storm was anywhere from 20-50cm sitting on top of a crust layer below. The new snow seemed to be bonding to that crust layer. A descent collapse in the pack happened under me around 10,000’ on a North aspect, but I was moving through a section of multiple large boulders. No cracking happened from this. No other whoomphing or cracking was observed anywhere else on the tour. From the summit to about 9500’ the snow was pretty great quality for most of the descent. A bit chunky in some solar exposed zones due to the warmer weather both Thursday and Friday, but the trees held really great snow and rounded out a fun day. From the TH to about 9500’ the snow was wet, heavy, and sticky, and we experienced glopping early on in the day. Was surprisingly not much worse by the late afternoon descent, probably due to the growing cloud cover throughout the day. But the snow up top was killer and made the early glopping worth it. Cannot recommend Banana chute or any of those “chutes” near it at this time, however, as it is still pretty low tide in there. Pyramid was great… go ski it! No signs of instability were observed.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 35-40
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 20-50
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Increasing cloud cover through the day, with slightly increasing West winds made for a beautiful day of touring.
Snowpack
Above 9500’ the snowpack was fairly consistent with 20-50cm of fresh snow on top of a crust layer, and a consolidated and stable feeling snowpack below. This 20-50cm seemed to be consolidating with itself well, but was sitting on a crust layer that allowed the new snow to slide a few centimeters when really pressured, but never anything significant… even when tested and jumped on when on the steeper slopes! I could never get it to move a few centimeters. Hand shear, pole, and probe tests from 9500’ to 11500’ agreed with this 20-50cm atop a crust, with the consolidated layers below. HS in this elevation range varied from 100cm to 180cm across mostly northern aspects. The previously seen basal depth hoar was not found, but also was not thoroughly looked for. Our biggest concern of the day was wind slabs, and these proved not to be concerning in our areas of travel. Everything below 9500’ and to the trailhead was rather heavy, wet snow. No observations other than visual were made.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R2
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9800 ft
Small wind slab avalanche, likely occurred on morning of Thursday 12/15, that ran about 200 feet on a northern aspect around 9800’ in the Banana chute.