Avalanche: Snake Creek

Observer Name
Luke The Drifter
Observation Date
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Avalanche Date
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Region
Salt Lake » Snake Creek
Location Name or Route
Snake Creek, Wasatch County
Elevation
9,700'
Aspect
Northeast
Slope Angle
39°
Trigger
Skier
Trigger: additional info
Unintentionally Triggered
Avalanche Type
Dry Loose
Avalanche Problem
New Snow
Weak Layer
Graupel
Depth
6"
Width
15'
Vertical
200'
Snow Profile Comments

Total snow depth 26"

Top 6" (weak layer) was recrystallized and faceted gruapel from last week's storm. Fist density, with some spotty areas of a 1" thick wind board crust. very loose in general, sugar skiing.

basal 20" , 1 finger density, fine grained (1mm) recrystallized snow. Sluffalanche ran on the top of this layer (bed surface was top of this layer).

Comments

Not a major incident but worth pointing out for the rotted nature of the surface snow on north aspcts. A good indicator that this snow will not be able to withstand much, if any, of a load during the next storm cycle.

Sluffalanche moved faster and further than expected. I had to skii out of the way after i noticed that it was moving faster than me and starting to take the tails of my skis down hill faster than I was skiing, which was slow due to the thin cover.

Debris pile was only 1-1.5' deep not enough to bury but enough that it could knock someone over.

4th run of the day in this area, 1st three runs were on a 35 deg. slope without incident., the 4th was a bit steeper (38-40 deg. or so).

Ran until the slope angle lessened to about 30 deg.