Evening Ridge Natural Avalanche

Riding quality was:

Good

Avalanche conditions

• Slab avalanches today or yesterday.
• 30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.
• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.
• Rapid temperature rise to near or above 0°C or wet surface snow.

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.