A Real Doozy of a Natural

Date/heure de l'avalanche

samedi 18 mars 2023 à 23 h 03

Estimation de l'heure d’occurrence de l’avalanche

> 24 à 48 heures

Nombre d'avalanches dans ce rapport

1

Taille de l’avalanche

4

Épaisseur de la plaque

150cm

Largeur de la plaque

1 500m

Longueur d'écoulement de l'avalanche

500m

Caractère de l'avalanche

• Plaque profonde et persistante
• Plaque persistante

Type d'élément déclencheur

Naturel

Versant de la zone de départ

• N

Bande d'altitude de la zone de départ

• Alpin

Altitude de la zone de départ

2 500m

Inclinaison de la zone de départ

35°

Altitude de la zone de dépôt

2 000m

Type de cristaux de la couche fragile

• Givre de profondeur

Exposition au vent

Pente sous le vent

Couverture forestière

Pente dégagée

Spotted an absolute hog of a natural south of Golden today. Looks like two events - the first slightly older event was cataclysmic and brought down around 1.5km of snow with a second more recent event (a size 3 on its own) occurring either in hang fire or reloading. Does it have the path length to be truly a size 4? Debatable... A kilometre and a half of 'lanche running to ground might beg to differ though. I'll leave that nuance up to someone with a calculator and more time on their hands. An important note is that a significant portion of the snow that moved here was in lower angle terrain in fans under the head walls. Heads up for any couloir hunters out there looking for smaller start zones - there may be some demons in the runouts.

Truly a hog the likes of which has not been seen since Robert Baratheon met his unfortunate end. And to honour it- a poem:

Went for a schnoodle in [redacted] with an Australian,

But it seems that the avalanches think they're Himalayan.

It was tempting to turn, tuck tail and run,

But we stuck to broken up low angle slopes and had fun.

We wanted to get rad but without overhead exposure,

We played it safe so now I can go frolf with my dog Rover.