Hillman's Highway and Tuckerman Ravine

At 7:50am on Saturday, February 1st a partner and I observed an unbonded 2" top layer of snow at the base of Hillman's Highway that would propagate and slide on the left, right, and center of the run in natural and human-triggered slides. Seeing rapid wind loading higher in Hillman's, we headed to Tuckerman Ravine.

At 8:30am at the base of the bowl in Tucks, we encountered the same weak layer, also 2" deep, on N, S, and E aspects. Higher in the ravine, in Sluice and Lip, the same 2" layer was observed—with as little force as the tap of a pole and with every ski cut, fracture lines of as much as 50' propagated out from the skier and created slides that went all the way to the floor of the ravine.

ski cuts intentionally triggered small avalanches