Observer Name
MAC
Observation Date
Monday, March 24, 2025
Avalanche Date
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Region
Salt Lake » Mt Olympus
Location Name or Route
Apollo Couloir
Elevation
8,000'
Aspect
Northeast
Trigger
Natural
Avalanche Type
Wet Loose
Avalanche Problem
Wet Snow
Weak Layer
Density Change
Depth
2'
Width
50'
Comments
Consider this a PSA: don't ski Apollo. Not because it's dangerous but because it's 1000+ feet of dippin' dots avy debris or heavily gouged snow. Can you ski it? Sure. Should you? Well....(PS some friends "skied" Zeus this morning and found the same thing. The gods don't want you skiing their Olympus.)
We dropped into Apollo via one of the Memorials, and so didn't know what we'd find until we got there. The Memorials all have debris in them right now, but very tame compared to this. Clearly snow had been shedding off Upper Hades with the daytime warming, filling Apollo with debris. We could see the debris stopped up where Apollo doglegs to looker's right, but at that point we had to decide just how much abuse we wanted to inflict on ourselves, as even the places without debris were heavily runneled from wet slides. (As for the gully exit, well, I've had it worse.)
All that said, I would personally appreciate it if 100 people would go ski it so that the debris would smooth out. So, should you ski Apollo? For you, no. But for me? Yes please. It would be an act of service. ;-)
(If you decide you want to volunteer to be one of the lucky 100, be careful what time of day you go. We went early (dropping in around 6:30 am) and so weren't too worried about wet slides. But with any more heat on Hades, there's still plenty of snow to shed.)
Coordinates
