Observation: Public

Observation Details

Triggered Avalanches

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

We started from the car around 4am, reaching the summit around 9am. Once breaking treeline we found a thin crust over snow that had not fully refrozen for the first few thousand feet, before the snow transitioned to fully refrozen. We ascended with ski crampons, but found most other parties made good progress by booting. After waiting on the summit for an hour or so to let the upper mountain thaw a bit, we began descending sometime between 10am and 11am. The first thousand or so feet of the descent were hard and icy, before becoming corn like for the next 2500 or so feet. The snow here seemed fairly stable, with an inverted pole only penetrating an inch or two into the snow. At about 4500' the snow became very slushy and unsupportive. On the last short steep step step on the SE aspect of the face before entering the swift creek drainage from the west at around 4200', we triggered a small slide. The slide was not big enough to bury or seriously injure a person, but could have likely swept them off their feet . After descending into the drainage, we observed debris from a similarly sized slide on the southwest aspect of the same face, also skier triggered.