- Submitted by
- Alex Wright
- Observations date
- Friday, March 22, 2024 at 23:00
- Location
- 51.470840° N 116.117360° W
- Reporting on
- Snow conditions
/-116.11736,51.47084,8,0,0/1026x200?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiYXZhbGFuY2hlY2FuYWRhIiwiYSI6ImNqd2dvZmUxdzE4ZWg0M2tkaXpuNG95aTQifQ.pBLM87fE3sIxRJqJT7Bf7g)
Quick
Avalanche
Snowpack
Weather
Incident
Snow conditions
- Riding quality was:
- Good
- Snow conditions were:
- Powder
- We rode:
- Alpine slopes
- Convex slopes
- Dense trees
- Mellow slopes
- Sunny slopes
- We stayed away from:
- Open trees
- Steep slopes
Information
- The day was:
- Cloudy
- Avalanche conditions
- 30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.
- Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.
Comments
At 10AM our party of two began the ascent of Richardson ridge via the NE shoulder of Corral chute 3. We added a stop in lower Corral 1 for turns in 15 cm of powder on top of the March 20th crust. At 12PM we took temps: -5 in upper storm snow and -10 air temp in the shade. We rounded the NE shoulder of Corral 3 at 2400m where the March 20th crust was softer and not obvious under the ski. Multiple hasty tests in the alpine included hard hand shears 50cm down, presumably on the Feb 3rd crust; HS 100+ cm. We spaced out 30m and began climbing the shoulder. As we crossed the first obvious rock band at 2430m only the rear skier felt a small local whumpf typical of facets around boulders. As the lead skier doubled back over the same rock band both skiers experienced large audible whumpfs, 5 seconds later a wide skier remote size 3 avalanche propagated 300m to the west from a few meters below Richardson Ridge sliding to ground and stopping in a terrain trap below us. We believe the failure initiated on facets sitting on the Feb 3rd crust, exacorbated by buried surface hour around the rocks that may have stepped down to January surface hoar. There was no skier involvement.