Turnagain Pass

There was one significant avalanche we know of yesterday, a dry slab triggered by a skier on a high elevation northerly face in Lynx Creek. Additionally, there were several small to large natural wet loose slides on all aspects facing the sun (including northeast and northwest). Some of these wet sluffs triggered shallow damp slabs with one slab triggered by a snowmachiner near Whittier.

Lynx Creek, skier caught/carried:  Yesterday a skier triggered a dry slab avalanche on the upper face of Captain’s Chair in Lynx Creek. Skier was reported to have triggered the slab on their second turn and was caught and carried around 2,000′ down the face and over a large cliff band near the bottom. Skier pulled airbag and was not buried. They were able to get back to the parking lot on their own power with their group. We will be gathering additional details today and thank the group for reaching out to us.

Photo looking up at the Captain’s Chair face and the chute on the far right of the photo. The debris can be seen coming from the slab out of view and over the lower rock band into the apron. Photo by party involved 4.15.23.

Another warm day is on tap. We can expect the snow surfaces that heated up yesterday to have refrozen to some degree this morning. Those crusts will likely soften by midday and turn into a wet loose avalanche issue. As seen in the photo below, even small wet sluffs can turn into a bigger issues if they trigger a slab or simply entrain a lot of snow on the decent. Paying attention to how soft and ‘punchy’ the snow gets will be key in avoiding getting tangled up in one of these. A general rule of thumb is once the wet/moist snow is around 6″ deep then these avalanche start becoming dangerous and it’s time to move to a cooler aspect. Note that even northerly aspects are seeing the sun this time of year.

Many slopes are still just starting the transition to warming up and these wet loose sluffs will not pose as much of a threat. Other things to keep in mind are cornices. Cornices start to ooze over and become much more likely to trigger this time of year. Keep giving them a wide berth. For those hunting dry powder, see problem 2 below…

Photo is from the Whittier area above the Shotgun Cove road. This is a westerly aspect around 2,000′. A good example of the surface snow heating up and losing cohesion to point these sluffs release. 4.15.23.

Slab triggered by a snowmachiner in the Whittier area. The snow at this lower elevation, around 1,000′, was fairly wet when it was triggered. This area sees the spring avalanche danger a bit before Turnagain. Photo by Graham Predeger 4.15.23.

Easterly ridgetop winds bumped up early this morning, averaging in the teens and gusting near 30mph. The winds are supposed to quiet down around 9 or 10 am, but with a bit of snow to blow around in the higher elevations, shallow fresh wind slabs may have formed. With high northerly aspects the last place to find dry soft snow, this is where these slabs will be the most likely seen. Older lingering dry slabs could also be lurking, similar to that triggered on Captain’s Chair.

If you are headed to the upper elevation shady slopes in search of dry snow, keep a close eye on cracking in the snow around you, hollow feeling snow, signs of wind loading, and any other signs of unstable snow. It’s good for us to remember, even a smaller avalanche can have huge consequences in big steep rocky terrain.

While our main concerns lie in the upper snowpack, we know there is a suspect layer of rounding facets buried deeper in the pack (3-6′). This layer was responsible for many very large human triggered avalanches in the second half of March, but we have not seen any activity on it for almost three weeks. Although the layer appears to have gone dormant, it is still something we are keeping in the back of our minds, especially as the snowpack slowly warms. Once the snowpack really starts seeing significant warming, we are feeling like some big wet slabs may be in the future. Something we are keeping close eye on.