Sawatch

Avalanche

John Mackinnon ยท Jan 9, 2014

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Weather

Obscured to Scattered skies over the past 4 days. Snowed off and on with several pulses of S2. Moderate winds were generally out of the NW and WNW and steadily transported available snow near and above TL. Temps remained on the chilly side throughout our trip. Airtemp this morning at 0700 of -13 C, Tsurf of -11 C and T20 of -6.5 C at the hut.

Snowpack

HS averaged 110 cm at hut. Boot pen of 65 cm and ski pen of 15 cm. HST of 40 cm in past 72 hours with 25 cm HN24. Steep temperature gradient in top 20 cm of recent storm snow. Previous NW winds have stiffened up the snow on northerly slopes at all elevations and drifted snow onto south and east facing aspects. HS on a SSE aspect at 11,500 ft of 90 cm with a FC/MFcr combo down 40 cm. We remote triggered a slide on this layer on 140107. This layer also produced sudden test results--CTM SC x2. HS of 80 cm on a NNE aspect at 11,300. Bottom half of the snowpack are FC and DH on northerly BTL slopes. Older slabs resting on facets observable in exposed areas on these slopes. Also found a buried SH layer down 35 cm on a NE aspect at TL. One skier triggered a very small soft slab avalanche on this layer. 35 cm of 4F snow observed on top of SH. We also found this layer on another NE aspect at 11,600 ft outside the hut. Our group observed cracking and collapsing on a variety of aspects near and below treeline on the day when we triggered the two slides. Prior to remote triggering the first slide, we observed several collapses and shooting cracks on the same slope.

Avalanche

Triggered 2 slides on 20140107. See avalanche observations.