Merry wind slabs eve! 🎅🌬️❄️🎄
Quick reportDemonic Pancake · Dec 24, 2023 · Central Selkirk
Quick report
- Weather
- cold, sunny, windy
- Ride Type
- sunnySlopes, steepSlopes, alpineSlopes, mellowSlopes
- Stayed Away
- steepSlopes, convexSlopes, alpineSlopes
- Riding Quality
- good
- Snow Conditions
- windAffected, powder
- Avalanche Conditions
- avalancheConditionSnow, avalancheConditionSlab
Nice sunny day at RMR slack country. Good skiing on features that have been affected by the wind and solar aspects. Temperature was fairly chill. Moderate winds and snow transport at ridge top. Some up slope winds in the bowls also created some reverse loading and wind lips lower in the alpine. We skied some freshly formed wind slabs today, knowing they're soft, thin and a low potential for propagation and by choosing well supported features and avoiding thin to thick. But I would be very weary of those as they get more consolidated in the next few days. There's a lots of people everywhere, beware of who's above or below you. 2 small skier accidental avalanches on fresh wind slabs (see avalanche tab for details)
Snowpack
- Obs Type
- summary
- Site Aspect
- NW, W, SW
- Test Fracture
- sudden
- Site Elevation
- 2300
- Test Initiation
- moderate
- Site Elevation Band
- alp
- Surface Conditions
- variable
- Test Failure Layer Crystal Types
- surfaceHoar
We did multiple hand pits in various start zones on our way. The first one in highway bowl. Check out min from a few days before. Top snow was a soft wind slab 15 to 20cm (F+) sitting on a 20cm 1F sla. One column slid on isolation on a 5ish mm surface hoar down 40. Similar results on the shaded side of Kokanee ridge, but a bit more resistant on shear test. Top 20cm fresh soft wind slab on another cm slab. There is a seemingly supportive crust down 55cm.
Avalanche
- Trigger Type
- skier
- Wind Exposure
- crossLoadedSlope
- Avalanche Size
- 1
- Slab Thickness
- 20
- Trigger Sub Type
- accidental
- Start Zone Aspect
- NW
- Vegetation Cover
- openSlope
- Start Zone Incline
- 40
- Avalanche Character
- windSlab
- Number Of Avalanches
- 2-5
- Start Zone Elevation
- 2300
- Start Zone Elevation Band
- alp
- Avalanche Occurrence Datetime
- 2023-12-24T08:00:00.000Z
We skied from kokanee peak into Montana. Nice supported slope on the looker's left of the scruffy peak that avalanched yesterday. I skied the adjacent little chute on skier's left of the tracks. The new windslab is very obvious, but soft and skied well. I tried stomping it down while entering with no results. I was still skeptical (and knew it would be of low consequence in that feature...) so I entered doing a ski cut, and quickly aimed down and skied out. Still no results. The second skier did the same following my track and was able to release a size 1 wind slab at the top of the initial ski cut. No incident or involvement. We then saw another very small slab release from one of the switchbacks up roscoe and went over he skin track. (Photo was taken before the avalanche)