Surprisingly large avalanches

Date/heure de l'avalanche

lundi 3 janvier 2022 à 09 h 00

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

< 12 heures

Nombre d'avalanches dans ce rapport

6 à 10

Taille de l’avalanche

2

Épaisseur de la plaque

80cm

Largeur de la plaque

200m

Longueur d'écoulement de l'avalanche

50m

Caractère de l'avalanche

• Plaque de neige de tempête

Type d'élément déclencheur

Naturel

Croûte près d'une couche fragile

Oui

Couverture forestière

Forêt clairsemée ou sous-bois

We saw surprisingly large avalanches on the cliffs just South of Dinkey Peak. There were several crowns up to 80cm high, and one avalanche wrapped all the way around the main strep face, propagating ~200m - much more than I'd expect with a pure storm slab problem. Most of the avalanches went down to a very solid crust which was supportive enough to stand on on foot. I took a look to see if I could find facets near the crust but heavy snow (and ~1cm of snow already fallen on top of the crust) made it difficult to tell. I've been away from the coast for two weeks so I'm not sure if this crust was the surface snow from before the storm or if it was buried previously.

We stomped on some smaller steep features and saw some cracking but no movement. Buy it seemed most bigger terrain in the area had already slid naturally. We steered clear of any avalanche terrain big enough to cause problems.