Avalanche: Monitors

Observer Name
mark white
Observation Date
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Avalanche Date
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Region
Salt Lake » Park City Ridgeline » Monitors
Location Name or Route
West Monitor Bowl
Elevation
10,100'
Aspect
Northeast
Slope Angle
38°
Trigger
Skier
Trigger: additional info
Intentionally Triggered
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Depth
Unknown
Width
50'
Vertical
600'
Comments

Went to West Monitor again to see if 3" of grauple and strong winds might over load the extremely weak snow pack, affirmative. Decent sized cornices on the ridge line made triggering a soft slab extremely easy. One drop of a small cornice initiated a soft slab that released and propegated out to about 50ft wide, and ran about 700ft before the slope angle decreased.

Comments

Crown was about 7 to 10" at the deepest point. Inspection of the crown revealed it ran under the thin and fragile rain crust, must have collapsed the crust in the starting zone were it was wind loaded then gouged down into the facets and left alot of dirt and bushes uncovered on its path down the slope. Moved with good speed until it reached were the slope angle decreases, nice powder cloud. Some bad pics of the crown.

Comments

New snow consisted of 3" of grauple sitting on top of a fragile rain crust, crust was so fragile could only tell it was there by reaching in with a bare hand. did find a peice strong enough to dig out without breaking it. Cornices breaking back farther than I expected almost took a ride down the hill with one, first day in a long time I could make a snow ball.

Coordinates