Avi danger in the East

[JD]

Gotta jet to work, but just wanted to mention, today skiing far out in the notch on the spruce side we touched off 2 large slab slides. The first one almost took a photographer who had set up in the slide path. He lost his poles and gloves, but was lucky to get the hell out of the way with his pack. The second one was involving me, and I am lucky to not have gone for a ride. The layer at the ground is horrible, unbonded depth hoar and sugar snow. The sun has really affected the new snow. I have never seen slabs this big break off. Crown 2-4 feet deep, 40-50 feet wide. Chunder was more the 6 feet deep. More then enough to bury and severly injure a skier. I was lucky to grab a tree almost immediately and still it was a very close call, I could not believe to power of the snow as it blew past me, and I felt for a second that I was gonna dislocate my shoulder. This was wooded terrain. Avi danger on the south facing slopes of the greens is very high. Please be careful exploring. I am actually praying for rain this weekend and will NOT ski anything steep until the snowpack is stableized. heads up!

 

[Marc]

Gotta jet to work, but just wanted to mention, today skiing far out in the notch on the spruce side we touched off 2 large slab slides. The first one almost took a photographer who had set up in the slide path. He lost his poles and gloves, but was lucky to get the hell out of the way with his pack. The second one was involving me, and I am lucky to not have gone for a ride. The layer at the ground is horrible, unbonded depth hoar and sugar snow. The sun has really affected the new snow. I have never seen slabs this big break off. Crown 2-4 feet deep, 40-50 feet wide. Chunder was more the 6 feet deep. More then enough to bury and severly injure a skier. I was lucky to grab a tree almost immediately and still it was a very close call, I could not believe to power of the snow as it blew past me, and I felt for a second that I was gonna dislocate my shoulder. This was wooded terrain. Avi danger on the south facing slopes of the greens is very high. Please be careful exploring. I am actually praying for rain this weekend and will NOT ski anything steep until the snowpack is stableized. heads up!

Good advice JD. We did the avi course up in the notch and we had some perfect examples of facetted snow, all at the ground level. As sugary as sugary can get. And not only that, there's a crust above the depth hoar with all the new snow on top of that.

We also found a lot of weak layers between layers of windblown snow. There was 2-3 meter deep spots in the notch that scored a 3 for Rutschblock (I know, cause I'm the one that fell off the damn block).

 

[Birdman829]

I had heard that avi danger was high after the storm and I kind of figured it might be worse after the little warm up the last couple days. Glad to hear you're OK.