Sawatch

Avalanche

Anonymous · Feb 18, 2019 · Sawatch

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Weather

Low teens, moderate intermittent wind, patchy clouds. Negative temperatures and strong winds the night before with a dusting to a few inches of new snow.

Snowpack

Dusting to an inch of new snow on a wind slab, with several deeper persistent layers. No formal assessment of the snowpack was made. The layer that broke was a deep persistent layer close to the ground.

Avalanche

See Route Description above. Avalanche was triggered on a rollover at about 12,000ft on a SSE facing slope. it propagated up ~4-5 feet and went all the way to the ground (deep persistent layer). The avalanche broke roughly 50% across the small cirque