Class 2 NAK South Face Avalanche, 1800m

Avalanche date/time

Monday, January 29, 2029 at 20:29

Estimated occurrence time of avalanche

Less than 12 hours ago

Number of avalanches in this report

1

The size of avalanche

2

Slab thickness

60cm

Slab width

60m

Run length

120m

Avalanche Character

• Persistent slab
• Wind slab

Trigger subtype

Accidental

Start zone aspect

• S

Start zone elevation band

• Treeline

Start zone elevation

1,800m

Start zone incline

30°

Runout zone elevation

1,700m

Wind exposure

Cross-loaded slope

Vegetation cover

Sparse trees or gladed slope

Here is a link to a video showing the slide afterward.

NSFW language warning. (https://imgur.com/a/e4wYTIM)

It is very clear we should not have been in that terrain and made a severe mistake in our decision to travel through what we were considering to be supported terrain. I'll explain our flawed plan below.

We were a party of two. Our plan had been to skin up the tree-covered sections of Nak and take a look at skiing some of the north-facing runs into the bowl shared with Thar.

Part way into our climb, after maybe 300-400m of climbing, it was clear that a lot of the slopes we were traveling on were more wind loaded. As was forecasted for that day. We were sticking to the trees and trying to avoid any open slopes or overhead hazards.

As we neared about 1800m of elevation, we heard a decent-sized whomp. It was abundantly clear we should not be on Nak even trying to stick to the trees or even attempt trying to reach the north-facing slopes down into the bowl. From that point we it was clear we needed to turn back. We had to chose between returning down the skin track, or choosing a route with slightly more skiers right. The route skier's right still felt far from ideal, but we had assumed the whomp came from skier's left.

So the plan was formed to travel down skiers right from where we turned around. The slope was not ideal. But we had hoped it was our most supported option.

I traveled the orange mark you can see in one of the pictures.

About 50% of the way through that orange line, the whole face in front of me began to move. All I wanted at that point was to get closer into the trees. That thankfully it worked and I was not pulled into the main slide path. I was able to stop right in the trees where I took the pictures from. I was extremely close to going down with the avalanche.

After things settled. It became clear that the top of slope area we had first heard the whomp, was actually across a much much larger than we had expected. The avalanche propagated 100+ feet wide on two sections beside some trees in the middle. The crown looked massive from where I was. Our best guess at crown size was 50-90cm.

Overall it was incredibly poor decision-making that allowed us to even arrive at a situation where navigating any south-facing terrain was a possibility. Of course, we wished to not have traveled in that area at all on that day. In hindsight, once we were spooked and wanted to travel back down, and didnt really like either of our two options, we wish that we had pushed over the next 100m or so into the north facing slope and navigated down that terrain instead.

The most emberassing thing aside from the poor decision making, was that this type of slide was almost explicitly predicted in the forcast itself "Sunday, riders should be cautious around

pockets of stiff wind slab in the alpine and treeline. These

slabs may fail easily where they overlie a slick crust and will

be in more atypical locations, as northerly winds have

created a reverse-loading pattern."

We believed we were being cautious at the time, but clearly we were not.