Quick report
We had an awesome day out in the field looking for cold winter snow- which was easy to find on all aspects, even on solars late in the day. The only exception to this was where the NE winds yesterday had scoured more exposed N, NE terrain and ridge tops. We found mostly boot top powder but occasionally deeper turns in more sheltered areas. Did not observe any cracking or signs of instability even in wind loaded terrain. We were climbing the south face of Mt Rose when we noticed a rather fresh looking D2 avalanche on the East bowl of Mt Houghton. The debris looked fairly fresh, with the lookers right side of the crown showing signs of a recent wind deposit filling it back in. The slopes adjacent appeared to be very cross loaded with numerous wind pillows and ripples visible from a distance- best guess that this avalanche was naturally triggered during yesterday’s N/NE wind event.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Avalanche
- Size
- D2 R2
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- E
- Elevation
- 10300 ft
D2, R2, East aspect, 10300‘ wind slab, natural trigger Jan 8 PM (estimated)