Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Day began with rain at the Isaac Walton Inn parking lot which slowly turned to groppel on the ascent. We made it to the top of Repeater Ridge and dug two snow pits on the Northern aspect which showed failure, but no propagation on the persistent week layer about 12 inches down. With this in mind we skied a north facing, lower angle shot without any problems. Feeling emboldened by our findings, we decided to step out and ski a steeper north facing line off Repeater Ridge (~40 degrees). Our first two skiers descended without incident, but our third skier triggered a slab avalanche that luckily they were able to ski out of to safety. This avalanche failed on the buried weak layer that was previously noted, had a crown depth of about 12”, width of ~100 feet and travelled about 150 feet. After this incident, we skied back down the South aspect towards Marion Lake which exhibited typical spring afternoon conditions with rollerballs and heavy snow. Lots of lessons learned today!
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Recent Snowfall
- 3” at the top of Repeater Ridge
Rain low down with snow above ~6000 feet yielding to sunny conditions in the early afternoon.