Evening Ridge Natural Avalanche

La qualité du hors-piste était:

Excellente

Conditions d'avalanche

• Avalanches de plaque datant d'aujourd'hui ou d'hier.
• 30 cm + de neige fraîche ou transport important de neige par le vent ou pluie au cours des dernières 48 heures
• Whoumfs ou bruits sourds ou fissures qui se propagent.
• Augmentation rapide de la température jusqu'à près ou au-dessus de 0°C ou neige mouillée en surface.

We packed our conservative mindset today and avoided avalanche terrain. We found numerous fresh natural avalanches with crowns 30 to 40 cm in depth. The biggest avalanche we found was a size 2.5 on a north facing feature around 1800 m, video summary of that avalanche here: https://youtu.be/RMm2gWNf3nY (Note - we originally thought this one failed on the early January facets, but it may actually be fresh surface hoar that was buried January 11. We'll continue to investigate this interface over the coming days.) The avalanche failed just below ridge-crest in a wind loaded feature and had surprisingly large propagation.

We did a bit of digging today and the early December Crust/Facet layer largely eluded us. Where we did find it, we didn't get any results on it in our test profiles. But, it remains on our minds, especially as temperatures stay warm.

We'll be putting together a pretty similar travel plan tomorrow as the snowpack adjusts to all the new load and warming.