Date of Observation: 01/18/2023
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: AMR tour. N-NE-E. 10,000ft to 11,500ft
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Small wind slab above Kebler Pass Rd. The wind-protected steep pitches on East Bowl where we skied, clearly had old storm slabs that had run through the terrain and disrupted the snow surface but would have been small in size.
Weather: NW flow had the final kick. Moderate snowfall throughout the day. Irwin recorded 5″ of new snow. Poor visibility and blizzard-like conditions at times as snowfall combined with strong winds and blowing snow. Obscured sky through the day as the sun tried to poke through, but the orographic cloud was in the way.
Snowpack: Every day is crazy deep. Abnormal conditions and something we are not used to. We skied steep slopes to around 40 degrees and primarily managed the terrain for wind slabs. We chose not to ski Big Chute due to the continuous cross-loading it was seeing. The top of Rock Chute had a thicker slab, again from cross-loading and we chose to simply steer around it. Where we dropped into East Bowl, we primarily encountered small sluffs, until we got down to the lower more open areas, where there were notable thick cross-loaded pillows. Other areas of East Bowl are of course heavily wind-loaded from the top.
Stopped by Surface Hoar Meadow, north aspect at 10,550. HS 275. The 1/12 interface was down 70cm. 4 to 5mm SH at this location, below F hard snow. An ECT produced a hard result on a different SH layer down 110cm in 1F snow. No obvious signs of instability traveling through that area.
Photos:-
- Small wind slab above Kebler Pass Rd.
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- Lots of snow in the trees, another thing we don’t often see.
