Northern San Juan
AvalancheDon Moden · Feb 4, 2014 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Lower 42Long/Powerline West Aspect 11,240
Snowpack
Fresh storm slab along with fresh wind slab over crust with persistent layers
Avalanche
Broke on skiers first turn with a remote at the edge of trees and small boulder group. It was a slow trigger which propagated uphill to a larger boulder group, then slid. Estimated upper slope around 40-degrees. About 1/3 downhill a step down occurred. It didn't look like to the persistent layer at 30cm from ground from earlier in the year, but from the storm cycle in early January. The slide did sweep through the trees about 50-feet in and to the valley floor. Also, as you can see in the picture it tried to propagate across the slope but lost energy at the slight ridge mid-slope.