Observer Name
Charlie Stoker
Observation Date
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Avalanche Date
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Region
Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Twin Lakes area
Location Name or Route
Twin Lakes
Aspect
Northeast
Trigger
Skier
Trigger: additional info
Remotely Triggered
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Avalanche Problem
New Snow
Weak Layer
New Snow
Depth
4"
Width
100'
Vertical
50'
Comments
Observed this remotely triggered while skinning back to Brighton after a day of Backcountry 101 offered through the UAC. This was remotely triggered from about 10' off the ridge.
We observed widespread cracking and failures on test slopes throughout the day, with upside-down storm snow breaking 4"-5" down fairly easily. The NE facing pit we dug earlier produced ECT-N, but did not produce propagation (different wind direction and tree cover). We saw the cracking from where the two skiers are in this photo but didn't capture how wide it was until after we skied around and below it.
The big danger with this slide is that it would have deposited you right into a not-quite-frozen portion of Twin Lakes.
Sorry for the low quality photo. The snow was coming down heavily all day.
Coordinates