Lanham Creek

Toured to head of Lanham Creek drainage and skied on both northerly and southerly aspects. Snow total from the last few days were notable, and right side up, with settled snow from snowfall at the end of the week, with 10-15cm of low density snow from the last 24hrs. Ascending steeper forested terrain above 4800-5200' elevation band, we observed widespread natural point releases/dry loose which appeared to be triggered by small tree bombs. This involved the upper 5-10cm of very low density new snow. Hand pit and multiple test slopes in this zone revealed no deeper instabilities in the older storm snow. Approximately 40-50cm of snow with right side up density profile sits above a prominent crust on both northerly and southerly aspects. Cornices demonstrated some growth from the last few days, and were reactive to skis, at times triggering the low density surface snow. The day's weather began with snowfall (S1-2) and obscured skies, with intermittent sun breaks by mid morning, and by noon full sun, which quickly began to impact exposed southerlies. Winds were light to moderate out of the west. By the time we exited the field at 1530 skis were sunny with continued light winds out of the west. Temperatures warmed notably below 4000' in the afternoon hours. A member of our party unintentionally triggered a D1 windslab skiing adjacent to where the slab released. We did not ascend to examine the interface. Notably, I have observed the terrain feature that produced this avalanche to be subject to crossloading throughout this season. Despite this isolated event, overall we felt stability in non-wind loaded terrain was good, and following ski cuts to manage the dry loose hazard we comfortably skied non-wind affected slopes up to 35 degrees on northerly and southerly aspects. We avoided wind loaded slopes or terrain that appeared to have been loaded in recent days (interestingly, the location the windslab was triggered from did not have significant wind effect, though likely was immediately adjacent to area of slab formation).

Lanham Creek

Quick report

Avalanche