Northern San Juan
AvalancheHannah Mader · Feb 24, 2019 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Clear skies, little to no wind. Slightly overcast earlier in the day with more sun exposure and slight increase in temperature in the hour before the slide likely occurred.
Avalanche
Came across a recent most likely skier triggered avalanche. Conducted a search but found no signal in the debris. Avalanche ran to the ground and started on a shallow convexity. The upper crown line runs along a previously buried rock band and ran about twenty feet before hitting a stand of trees on another convexity. The upper crown had a crack running from a skier/rider’s line towards the now unburied rock band. Avalanche propagated around the lower stand of trees and resulted in a larger crown line below that was about 100 cm deep and about 20-30 feet wide. Ran almost 1000 feet to the bench below. Debris was still soft at the time of search. There were a number of fresh lines down Mustang today and plenty of signs of old ones. It’s alarming that this happened in the middle of a very popular, often-skied run.