Quick report

Emigrant Peak

David Zinn
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Quick report

We toured to Emigrant to look at Friday's skier-triggered avalanche. After a good overnight freeze, the snowpack was holding up well to the heat at 2:30 PM when we made our exit, although there were a few spots that were becoming unsupportable. 

In the basin, there were dozens of avalanches ranging from wet loose to wet slab avalanches. Some mixed with the dirt below and seemed to be half debris flow, half snow avalanche. The human-triggered avalanche was pure dry slab. There was avalanche activity on all aspects and all elevations. 

The slide broke 850' wide, 1-3 feet deep, and ran 400-500' vertical (ASu-HS-R3-D2.5-0). The avalanche failed on a layer of fist hard faceted crystals that formed in January. In our crown profile we were still getting unstable results (ECTP13).