Windslabs and Weak Layers
AvalancheMegan Kelly · Dec 31, 2016 · Flathead
Quick report
- Weather
- sunny
- Ride Type
- mellowSlopes
- Stayed Away
- convexSlopes, steepSlopes, alpineSlopes
- Riding Quality
- good
- Snow Conditions
- powder
- Avalanche Conditions
- avalancheConditionSlab, avalancheConditionSnow
The break from the storm allowed us to get some visibility into the alpine today. We got to check out the human triggered avalanche in Rainguage from Tuesday. The 30 cm of storm snow was already filling in the debris. Interestingly, on a similar South aspect we also noticed a natural avalanche that released on a persistent slab within the last 24 hrs (see photo). We suspect a failure in the storm snow from earlier this week that possibly stepped down to the weaker sugary snow below. This area is a weird combo of wind slabs and weak layers that always gives us the creeps.
Avalanche
- Run Length
- 150
- Slab Width
- 100
- Trigger Type
- natural
- Wind Exposure
- crossLoadedSlope
- Avalanche Size
- 2.5
- Start Zone Aspect
- S
- Vegetation Cover
- openSlope
- Avalanche Character
- persistentSlab
- Number Of Avalanches
- 1
- Start Zone Elevation
- 2180
- Weak Layer Burial Date
- 2016-12-18T19:00:00.000Z
- Avalanche Observation
- 12to24hrsAgo
- Weak Layer Crystal Type
- facets
- Start Zone Elevation Band
- alp
- Avalanche Occurrence Datetime
- 2016-12-30T12:30:00