Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
The storm was in full swing by the time we arrived at the Tamarack TH at about 8:30am today and it intensified during our tour. We estimated about 10" of new snow near the trailhead and once atop the Galena West Ridge, the new snow depth ranged from about 6-12" with some scouring in wind-exposed areas and loading on the N side of the ridge. At the ridge, one member of our group measured the temperature at 21.4 degrees with SW winds gusting over 20MPH. We did not experience any whumphing and did not see any evidence of avalanche activity until after we triggered the slide described above. We noted some cracking when beginning our descent before triggering the avalanche which extended about 6" beyond our ski tips.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 8890 ft
This morning at approximately 10am one member of our four-person group triggered an R2, D1.5 slide on an approx. 35 degree short treed slope in the Galena West zone. The slide occurred after skiers #1 and #2 had safely skied the slope without incident. Skier #3 dropped slightly skiers left of the first two and triggered the slide during their second turn. Skier #4 yelled out the slide and skier #3 was able to safely stop and let the slide pass before it picked up momentum. After the slide passed, skiers #3 and #4 moved to a more treed, slightly less steep pitch and both safely skied down, rejoining skiers #1 and #2. Luckily, the runout did not go far enough to reach skiers #1 and #2,although there was a moment of concern when they saw the cloud of dry snow from the avalanche approaching from above. We did not do a thorough investigation of the slide but we estimated a crown height of about 12” and that the failure occurred on top of the firm pre-storm bed surface. It was actively snowing and wind loading when this incident occurred. We believe this was either a storm slab or wind slab avalanche. It certainly had enough snow and speed to knock a skier off their feet and throw them into consequential treed terrain below. It may have had enough snow to bury someone. Once we were all in a safe zone under the slope, we looked up at two prominent couloir features slightly west of the slope we skied and noticed crowns in each of the features (see photo). We are unsure if those slides occurred yesterday, overnight, or earlier this morning but we estimate those slides to have been R3, and D2.5. There were two tracks entering the larger of the two couloirs which we noticed at the top, and since we did not see tracks leaving the area, we conducted a hasty beacon search and found no signals. Our suspicion is that the two exit tracks were covered by the new snow. Overall this was certainly a learning moment for our group of experienced skiers and riders. Earlier in the day during our beacon check, we discussed briefly which specific features were off limits given the conditions and specifically called out the two couloir features described above. However, after resisting the desire to ski those two features when we were on top of them, we became complacent about the slope we ended up skiing, likely due to the fact that the slope was treed and overall less prominent and featured than those we had passed up.