Date of Observation: 01/30/2021
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Location: Kebler Ruby Range
Aspect: East, South East
Elevation: 10,000-11,000
Avalanches: Several natural loose snow and soft slab avalanches running throughout the day. All small in size.
Weather: Snowing S1 to S3. Throughout the day. We were mostly in protected terrain with light winds.
Snowpack: Skiing pow, holly surprisingly deep. Didn’t officially find the recent storm interface and get an accurate new snow measurement. Irwin’s reported numbers look spot on. Around 15″ of new snow with considerably more at higher elevations.
We traveled through, steep, but small benchy terrain. Small slabs and sluffing were easy to manage. Wind-loaded terrain would have been more problematic. A few collapses went into deeper persistent weak layers and propagated across the slope. However, the relatively small and supported nature of those slopes helped keep those from producing persistent slab avalanche. Bottom line, orographics produced notably more snow in some places.