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Avalanche: Argenta

Observer Name
Mike
Observation Date
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Avalanche Date
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Region
Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Mill D South » Kessler » Argenta
Location Name or Route
Argenta
Elevation
10,100'
Aspect
Northwest
Trigger
Skier
Depth
10"
Width
150'
Comments
We went up Argenta this morning with the plan to ski greaseball and the west couloir. We observed some minor red flags on the way up such as a bit of cracking under our skis on steeper slopes and a small whumpf on the skintrack. Overall though it seemed like the new snow had settled out and we did not see a lot of evidence of wind effect except for one section of the skintrack around 9000' that was completely covered over. On the way up the steep headwall and on the traverse from the summit over to greaseball we kicked at some test slopes and got minor cracking, but nothing that propagated and no slabs.
Regardless we figured it would be wise to do a ski cut before dropping in. We started down on a small ridge just skier's left of greaseball proper. My partner did a ski cut and got no result. He skied down to a rollover that dropped skier's right into greaseball and did one more cut. A 6" slab released and propagated across the chute. As the slide traveled down it pulled out some deeper pockets about 10-12" deep or so.
In total, the slide ran 1600' down the gully, right about to the point where the skintrack crossed it. The debris did not pile up that deeply in any one spot but fanned up out of the gully a little bit at the end.
Coordinates