Quick report
Skied off South Maggie’s today and found rapidly warming snow, even before 10 am. On the ascent between 8:20 and 9:30, northerly slopes still held cold snow, but anything off of true north held a 1-3 cm crust, that was mostly breakable. I ski cut the top of a SE facing line at 9:45, and immediately triggered a wet loose avalanche, that entrained most of the snow in the feature, roughly 6-8” deep. I sidestepped back out, and moved over to a NE facing feature. I pushed off several loose avalanches in this feature as well, with dry ones on the right side that faced more N, and wetter ones in the middle, where it faced more E. It was easy enough to manage these, but debris did pile up in the deposition zones. No slab activity or cracking was noted at all. Ultimately, the skiing was good, and the avalanches were less than D2, but they had enough force to knock you off your feet in consequential terrain if you weren’t conservative with your terrain management.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 8600 ft
Several wet and dry loose avalanches. All less than D2 individually, but the collective debris piled to 4-6 feet deep on the apron of the Dogleg.