Soft and hard snow and sluff slide
Quick reportolivier.clements · Apr 8, 2024 · White Pass West
Quick report
- Weather
- cloudy, windy
- Ride Type
- alpineSlopes, convexSlopes, mellowSlopes, openTrees, steepSlopes
- Stayed Away
- cutBlocks
- Riding Quality
- ok
- Snow Conditions
- hard, powder, windAffected
- Avalanche Conditions
- avalancheConditionSnow
We skinned up the Big Kahuna around lunch to about 1500m, then headed over to Fraser chutes for a quick final lap. A great little day! On our skin up the big Kahuna, we saw a lot of wind transport happening at the ridge line. We found boot top, light fluffy powder covering the entire face, but it was overtop a very hard surface. This made skinning a little challenging, as the new snow didn't provide good support and often our skis would struggle to get edge grip. Visibility was pretty poor/flat. We didn't notice any snow quality change from the bottom to 1500m. After our lap on the big Kahuna, we headed over to Fraser chutes for another run. Looking back, we notice a loose dry avalanche had released from the rocks and had covered a lower section of our ski tracks. It must have happened between 1 and 2pm (see the images). Our lap down the Fraser chutes was very wind scoured and hard, but overlaid with nice soft snow lower down in the trees.
Avalanche
- Trigger Type
- natural
- Avalanche Size
- 1
- Start Zone Aspect
- N
- Vegetation Cover
- openSlope
- Avalanche Character
- looseDry
- Number Of Avalanches
- 1
- Avalanche Observation
- 12hrsAgo
- Avalanche Occurrence Datetime
- 2024-04-07T20:30:00.000Z
Loose dry/sluff avalanche that seem to result from wind loading up high.