Aspen

Snowpack

I skied from the Friends hut to Ashcroft through Pearl Pass this morning. I left Friends hut at around 8am. Made it through Pearl Pass with limited visibility, but seemingly light snowfall and high winds. Skied off the pass and down across the flats in high winds, and drifting snow without incident, noticing a couple pockets of significant wind loading. I decided to descend from the Mace saddle down flatter terrain and enter a North/Northwest facing slope that comes off the shoulder of Greg Mace peak, I believe this slope is referred to as the Backyard pitch of the Tagert hut. I thought the winds would be lighter lower down and did not expect the wind loading to be as significant. At this time it was around 9:30 and had been storming for around 4 or 5 hours. When entering the slope I took lower entry angle that was wind scoured and was attempting to ski down across the path to lower angled terrain. As soon as I entered the path, at roughly 11,600 feet, the entire slope in front and above me, which were significantly steeper, fractured about 12inches deep and slide about 1000 feet down the path. The slopes farther out in front of me sympathicly released about the same depth and slide down the path. The wind scoured spot where I was standing did not slide and I stood there and watched to slope break into blocks and slide. The Slide was most likely D2; the debris was only 2 to 3 feet deep but had large blocks of wind slab roughly the size of tabletops. This slide only involved the new snow and did not step down into older layers. The wind had loaded the slope much faster than I expected, the wind drifts higher in the slope where clearly steep and large enough to slide. It seemed the entire basin was loading into this area. Therefore that slab could have involved snow from Sunday night’s storm that transported onto this pitch.