I guided a ski ascent of a small peak about 1 kilometre east of Healy Pass on
March 12th. A size 2 slab avalanche had slid out of the looker's left hand
shoulder of the second slide path. The crown looked to be as deep as one metre
and about 40 metres wide. I suspect that it was a fresh wind slab. The debris
ran to the lower part of the track, but not into the runout zone. The slide did
not trigger any deeper layers. We restricted our travel to low angle terrain.
Yesterday, March 13th, I instructed my AST 2 class in the Storm Mountain Fire
Break in Kootenay Park. Only a couple centimetres of new snow in the Stanley
Valley parking lot when we got there. We set an ascending track from the
parking lot to the top of the fire break. Once we had 7 people standing in one
spot there we got a large whompfing settlement on what I guessed was the basal
facetes. Some of the fracture line was visible to us 10 metres up slope,
thankfully the slope is only about 15 degrees there (not avalanche terrain). We
got several easy compression test results there on the Valentines surface hoar
layer down 60 centimetres (snowpack depth was 160 cms -the top half bounded
snow, the bottom faceted junk). These observations very much validated the
day's hazard forecast of High in the alpine, High at treeline, and Considerable
below treeline. We made a run down the fire break which has been seeing a lot
of skier traffic and needs more snow to cover old tracks. While
training in the bottom of the fire break we had about an hour of snowfall of
3-4 cms/hour and when we got back to the parking lot there was about 8 cms of
new snow lying on the ground there.
Happy trails,
Barry Blanchard
Mountain Guide
www.barryblanchard.ca
www.yamnuska.com
_______________________________________________
These observations and opinions are those of the person who submitted them. The
ACMG and its members take no responsibility for errors, omissions, or lapses in
continuity. Conditions differ greatly over time and space due to the variable
nature of mountain weather and terrain. Application of this information
provides no guarantee of increased safety. Do not use the Mountain Conditions
Report as the sole factor in planning trips or making decisions in the field.
Please check out http://acmg.ca/mcr for more information.
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