<This is an old post of Christoph's that didn't go through; apologies for
its lateness, but I thought it would make for interesting reading anyhow ...
TW>
A day of much precipitation and wind. The wind is strong from the south
in the alpine, but light just below 1600 m. About 15 cm of snow fell at
the ski hill in the last 24 hours. Temperatures were -4 at 1600 m.
We felt several medium sized whumpfs and cornices broke about 40 cm
thick when kicked. Again, we saw no avalanche activity on the Kathlyn
Face or in Simpson's Gulch, but the visibility was poor.
On 21 January, there was a skier involvement in Little Simpson's Gulch.
I spoke to one of the party today. They skied at about 1700 m on a SE
aspect near a rock. The first skier was about three turns into a 35
degree slope when he heard his partner yell. He was able to ski out.
They describe the avalanche as a hard slab up to 1 m thick and 150 m
wide. It ran 200 m. They say that after the release, the rock showed
much larger. It appears that they hit a shallow spot. It does not appear
that it stepped down into the deep instabilities. The sizes sound a bit
big to me, but it must have been scary.
We dug a pit near Little Simpson's in a still wind affected spot. There
were 173 cm of snow. The surface hoar is 80 cm down and does not react
consistently. There are several shears that compress progressively in
the storm snow. There is a hard consistent shear below a crust 120 cm
down. We also found a very thin rain crust at the surface in places - it
may have rained to TL for a bit yesterday.
--
Christoph Dietzfelbinger
Mountain Guide, Bear Mountaineering and Burnie Glacier Chalet
Box 4222
Smithers, B.C. V0J 2N0 Canada
tel. 250-847-3351 fax: 250-847-2854
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.bearmountaineering.ca
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