Public Observation

Observation Details

Observations

Toured punta bardini’s old growth and tele bowl today (skiers right). Started around 9am during the storm, good accumulation at base of the bowl during our ascent. Noticed a couple natural loose wet avalanches caused by falling snow off the trees. Only on steepest sections of bowl. The temperature swings during the storm really dictated the amount of rollers and pin wheels during our climb. Further up, wind blown snow was piling close to the ridge outside the trees, causing noticeable shooting cracks as we skinned . We were able to get big chucks to propagate and crack, but not slide.
Our decent around 12:30pm was great, good turns in semi soft snow. Would have been a bit better earlier when it was cooler. My partner was able to dig in real hard on a turn and get a hard slab avalanche to break, 6” crown depth and maybe 15 feet long- slid maybe 20 feet. Short of the unstable conditions, the biggest fear was hitting something just under the snow during our decent. So we took lots of breaks and descended slowly, keeping eyes on each other.
While exiting, we noticed an avalanche in the tele bowl next to us. At first glance it looked like a natural avalanche, but upon further investigation it appeared someone’s skin track had set off the avalanche. We saw the skin track continue in both directions, so we assumed the said party had exited the location.

Triggered Avalanches

Observed Avalanches

Signs of Unstable Snow