Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2987 m
- Slope Angle
- 23°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Active avalanche day, with collapses, cracks shooting over 300 feet, and an impressive remotely triggered avalanche in South Monitor (from before we got there).</p>
Three failure planes in the pit, shown above. Upper was mid-storm stellars, perhaps between Monday and Wednesday. Middle layer had visible near surface facets and surface hoar (noted at surface on Sunday), and was the culprit in 2 different several-hundred-foot-wide propagations. Bottom layer was larger facets under the crust.
. . . . . . . . .
Toured from 8,900' at Guardsman to 9,800' at Scott's/PC Ridgeline, and experienced collapses at all elevations. The most impressive collapse was on a high elevation north facing slope. But importantly, we had a small collapse on WNW facing at 9,800'. Would have been easy to write-off west aspects since they don't have basal facets from early season snow, but last week's 6 inches formed small NSFs that got buried under this recent storm. Especially with the SE winds we've had, high elevation west might still deserve attention.
. . . . . . . . . .
Below: pictures of crack that opened after impressive woomph. Dug down in several locations, each showed the same layering: failure was above a crust, in the snow that fell and faceted last week. NOT in the larger facets below the crust, which had seemed weaker in our test pit.
. . . . . . . . .
Below: Shots of South Monitor. Blue arrow in third picture shows piece of snow that came out with same remote trigger.
Below: A couple pics from various crown locations to show that the failure plane was in the same weak snow above the crust.