Avalanche: Monitors

Observer Name
mark white
Observation Date
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Avalanche Date
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Region
Salt Lake » Park City Ridgeline » Monitors
Location Name or Route
West Monitor
Elevation
10,100'
Aspect
Northeast
Slope Angle
38°
Trigger
Skier
Trigger: additional info
Unintentionally Triggered
Avalanche Type
Soft Slab
Depth
18"
Width
45'
Vertical
800'
Comments

Went up Willow the Park City ridgeline to see if there were any new avalanches in South or West Monitor. When the visability was good enough to see, I saw that neither had avalanched during the last snow and wind event. I thought they might have because of the tree shaking massive collapses I was getting on the south facing in Willow on the ascent. After looking at both bowls I decided to walk down the ridge of West Monitor to get a pic of the massive cornices that were formed during the wind event and make a statement about them being to large to mess with and could be dangerous if some one got to close to the edge. I then stopped on a flat part of the ridge and did a kick turn so I could take a photo, got a collaspe and saw a slide release at least 80 to 90ft away from my location. Got to where I could see it right as the powder cloud was subsiding. Top of the crown was 20 or so feet off the ridge, deepest part of the crown looked about 2.5ft deep with the average being about 18" deep and 45ft wide, once it got out of the choke it propagater out to 150ft. Looked to be new snow only. Pics the full slide, the crown, from a few different angles, flank were it propagated out wider, and debris.

Comments

Weak layer was a thin fragile rime crust over light density snow with denser snow and grauple on top. or it might just have been dense snow ontop of lighter density snow from Sunday. My bet is that it was the rime crust that collapsed, was findind lots of rime crust on the south walking up, too much hangfire to jump in and look at it up close. Pics rime crust. Oh yeah no cornices were molested today.

Coordinates