Forum Lake

A small windslab avalanche during high winds on Thursday night ran over a shallow area in an open, wind affected bowl, triggering a much larger Deep Persistent Avalanche. This failed near the bottom of the snowpack - likely in large loose depth hoar crystals, perhaps in conjunction with a crust from the warm spell in early November. The snowpack depth was highly variable in the area the avalanche initiated, with the crown quickly increasing from (estimated-only saw this at a distance) 30 cm to 200cm! The fact that it only took a small windslab to trigger this makes me wonder if a human would, riding the same/similar slope... It's definitely a tricky problem to assess, and I'll be shelving any plans to step out into big open terrain this weekend.