Crackin' Avys

Riding quality was:

OK

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes

The day was:

• Sunny
• Warm
• Windy

Avalanche conditions

• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.
• Rapid temperature rise to near or above 0°C or wet surface snow.

#thatlayerisstillaplayer Yes, we mean the January 17th surface hoar. Today we went to check out if this layer had potential to wake up with this weekend’s warming, and the answer was YES! We remote triggered a slab avalanche from over 100 meters away on this layer at 1750 m on a north west aspect. 



We skinned up through the shaded trees and got a few localized whumpfs. We dug a snow pit and found the January surface hoar down 70 cm. It did not react in an extended column tests with easy, moderate or hard taps, but we gave it an extra hard smack for good measure and got propagation. We took this result seriously since triggering deeper layers from a thin spot was a real possibility in the terrain we were in.

When we descended open below treeline terrain around 3 pm the snow was getting sticky from the sun. We were working the terrain in a conservative way and observed shooting cracks as we crested a roll and noticed we had triggered an avalanche on a steeper feature below us. Yup…with warming in treeline and below treeline terrain that has not been previously compacted or avalanched….consider this layer awake again!