Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
We started our ride today around 10am and the temps were nice and cold, the surface snow was light but only for a few inches. Below that you could feel a very thick slab that would almost stop the snowmobile if you did a deep down hill turn. We only observed isolated cracking on test slopes. We avoided riding avalanche terrain. Around 1pm we dug a pit near white rock lake with 130cm HS, and found the jan 2pwl our CT gave us a Sudden Collapse result 60cm up from the ground. Our ECT did not propagate. We continued to look for sheltered north facing areas to ride where the snow was the best. We observed surface hoar on the surface from last night, and then around 2:30 or 3 we remotely triggered the first avalanche. We were riding about 30-40 yards from where the toe of the debris stopped coming out of the trees into a flat area with a lot of tracks. The slope above it is always heavily wind loaded, there were someone’s tracks on the slope from earlier that day, but as we rode out of the trees the slide was just coming to a stop. Short run, but alot of snow and the slab chunks were very firm. Just to make sure we searched the debris for any transceiver signals, but found none. After inspecting the crown and bed surface. We rode on deciding to make our way out. About a 1/4mile away we rode on a small ridge about 10-15 yards from a slope, and again a slab released on the slope with some visible cracks near our tracks. This slide was not as deep but had the same bed surface and the debris slid down into some thick trees. Both avalanches were not surprising given the current layers in the snowpack however the amount of instabilities we observed did not indicate things were that touchy.
Avalanche
We remotely triggered two different avalanches at different times. Both were on north aspects around 8,000’ nobody was caught because nobody was in or on the slide path. The first was about 150yards wide it ran about 70yards and had a crown ranging from 3’ tall to 7’ tall. The second was about 50yards wide and ran about 60yards. The crown was from 1.5’ tall to 3or 4’ tall. Both had a very firm bed surface.