Ruby Range by Irwin

Date of Observation: 02/18/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Primary 11,000 to 12,600ft on NE-E facing terrain.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few recent shallow slabs or dry sluffs at this end of the Ruby Range. All from some form of recent wind loading. D1’s.

Weather: Partly Cloudy. Moderate winds were consistently blowing snow at upper elevations. The wind appeared to be decreasing in the afternoon, or the snow fetch was drying out.

Snowpack: Weirdness ontop of the old snow NSF junk about sums it up. The old wind board over facets that formed over a week ago now, is inconsistent and has no rime or reason in its distribution at ATL elevations. We didn’t encounter anywhere with an avalanche problem related to this, but we did find thin wind-boards over the NSF that lead to uncertainty about whether we would randomly encounter something thicker or more problematic. In the afternoon we snowmobiled around some NTL previously wind-loaded terrain with no notable results.

Where there wasn’t an old wind board on the NSF, it was just the recent snow on the NSF. There wasn’t enough new snow to create a slab over the weak layer. Managing for wind slabs was great travel advice. We didn’t encounter much for a wind slab but we were not traveling on a ridgeline. Up higher near the ridgelines it didn’t look like there was a good distribution of fresh wind-loading as many areas looked blown off or just not very loaded.