Avalanche: No Name Bowl

Observer Name
mark white
Observation Date
Friday, December 9, 2016
Avalanche Date
Friday, December 9, 2016
Region
Salt Lake » Park City Ridgeline » No Name Bowl
Location Name or Route
No Name Bowl
Elevation
9,800'
Aspect
Northeast
Slope Angle
38°
Trigger
Skier
Trigger: additional info
Unintentionally Triggered
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Avalanche Problem
New Snow
Weak Layer
Facets
Depth
12"
Width
50'
Vertical
250'
Comments

I arrived after the slide was triggered around 11:00. Crown was a foot at the deepest point tapering down to 8 or 9 inches at the flanks, ran about 250ft leaving a decent debris pile. Hopefully the person who triggered it will enlighten us on what happened but from what I could see they skied their first run off the top and undercut under the steep rocky portion at the top then came up for another and took it straight off the top triggering the slide in the shallow rocky portion of the starting zone. It was hard to tell if they took a ride or not, both sets of tracks were covered by debris and I didn't see evidence of tracks in the debris. The crown revealed that the weak layer was facets buried under the last three little storms this week, with some wind load thrown in for good measure, I noted the surface faceting earlier this week in the same location. I skied the skiers left flank below the wind load with no mishap.

Photos: A few of the crown, debris pile, whole deal and a shot where I cleaned the weak faceted layer out and the denser slab on top stayed in tacked