Public Observation

Observation Details

Observations

We skied Earthquake dome today, following the north aspects to ski better quality snow. Instabilities were obvious with cracking on steep convexities and in steep start points. to test our assumption that stability was poor we ski-cut our run and triggered a D1 soft slab avalanche that ran ~200'. The start point was ~37° on a North East slope (~41°) at ~9300 feet, the hardness of the slab was indicative of a storm slab rather than a wind slab. It required a few loading steps to release, though that is likely due to the concave slope the slab was on. A proper profile wasn't done due to lack of time, but the interface of interest was as follows: the bed surface was a 3 cm pen-hard temperature crust, upon which was a <1cm layer of soft faceting crystals, likely from the cold clear night/morning. on top of that was a fairly cohesive 4f to f hard, 30cm soft slab of new snow.

Triggered Avalanches

Signs of Unstable Snow