Front Range
AvalancheJason Maurer · Apr 1, 2016 · Front Range
Weather
Skies gradually breaking up through the day, and by about 1:00pm just scattered clouds existed with moderately gusty winds above 11,000ft. Ambient air temps hovering around 25F with a much colder wind chill above tree line.
Snowpack
Snowpack obs at 11,660ft on a east/north east aspect. No layers actually visible on the pit walls but once I conducted a couple compression tests I was getting easy to very easy results within the upper 40cm of the snowpack. 2 compression tests were repeatable with easy results (4 taps) that failed 34cm down on buried near surface facets.
Avalanche
First skier down initiated the 1st avalanche on the 2nd-3rd turn and was able to ski out of it and escape safely. The 2nd skier (myself) then preceded to slowly descend down to the avalanche start point so that I could measure the crown and inspect the bed surface. I then skied directly diagonal away from the 1st avalanche toward lesser angled terrain and then triggered the 2nd avalanche that took me off my feet but only ended up being r1/d1 size similar to the 1st avalanche. Both avalanches were within the storm snow and that was failing at approx. 34cm down in our snow pit. Obvious signs to the instability and if our terrain choices were any more extreme this would be a different story.