Sinclair Spa Day

La qualité du hors-piste était:

OK

Les conditions de neige étaient :

• Croûtée
• Affectée par le vent

Nous avons parcouru:

• Pentes alpines
• Pentes de faible inclinaison
• Forêt dégagée
• Pentes ensoleillées

Nous sommes restés à l'écart de:

• Pentes convexes
• Pentes raides

La journée était:

• Ensoleillée
• Venteuse

Conditions d'avalanche

• Avalanches de plaque datant d'aujourd'hui ou d'hier.

We had our faces exfoliated by strong southwest winds today at Sinclair. We saw several size 2 wind slab avalanches and some cornice fall on lee slopes (wind loaded slopes) in the alpine. These were in "Entrance Bowl".

We dug in a safe, representative location to investigate the failure plane of these avalanches and produced propagating Extended Column Test (ECT) results on hard taps both 25cm and 40cm deep (ECT P 24 x2). We didn’t find any buried weak layers at these interfaces, just varying hardness layers of wind slab. Our pit was on a NE aspect at 1620m.

We got a good look around the area as the day was partly cloudy with nil for precipitation, but travel was challenging especially in the alpine where it was heavily wind affected. There is some good snow remaining in sheltered treeline and below treeline areas.