Vail & Summit County

Avalanche

Chris Hluchan · Mar 20, 2016 · Vail & Summit County

View on map

Weather

Clear skies, light wind. We were up at about 11800ft on the easter aspect

Snowpack

11800ft E aspect on the top of baby bear glades: Lots of windloading near the top of the slope. We ran a few compression tests in a couple pits and saw the slab breaking about 15-25cm below the surface around CT5 with a SP break. The top layer was 1F hard wind slab, the weak layer was 4F hard defragmented particles, and there was a pencil hard slab underneath.

Avalanche

saw crowns and debris from 2 big avalanches under a cornice in the St John's chute. We could see some avalanche debris near the bottom of the slope. I have no idea when it ran.