Front Range

Snowpack

Touring/training on Berthoud Pass today and had some interesting stuff! I'm guessing you'll hear about this close call from the party involved, but we witnessed it and talked to them afterwards. I am Including some pics--let me know if you want bigger ones. First, as we were just dropping into Pumphouse Basin from the ridge, someone in our group said "slide!" and pointed to a moving avalanche. The path known as "Russell North Shoulder" (pretty sure it's that one, anyway) was running. We couldn't see any people from that vantage but moved down and around slightly for a better view where we could see 3 people on the edge of the debris, one with an avalanche airbag deployed. After I yelled a "are you guys alright?" they yelled back they were fine. They headed up hill towards us and we spoke with them for a few minutes. They were actually skinning up from Pumphouse basin and he admitted it wasn't the most conservative line. In the first pic (1550) you can see his skin track going into the avalanche. The skier's right side of the crown was deeper, maybe 2 feet. The fracture propagated from the skier's left side to that narrow rock rib in the middle and back up the other slope resulting in kind of a butterfly shape. From what the skier told me he deployed the airbag immediately but kind of slid downhill on his butt for a ways. He wasn't very wet/snowy, so I'm guessing he was pretty high when it fractured. I think he's lucky it didn't go bigger/higher. The sun and air temperatures were very warm this morning and I believe the instability on this slope was a combination of the recent NW wind loading (SE facing slope) and solar effects/warming. Later in the day we got some great results from the recent windslab. A test slope on East around treeline fractured about 10-12 feet wide and 6-12" deep. The picture isn't as good as the test result.