Avalanche: Chugach State Park

Location: Arctic Valley/ Gordon Lyon

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Took the skin track up from the tubing area to the nike road rather than following the creek bed up to Gordon Lyon. Breakable sun crust with surface hoar sitting on it on our way up while it was cold on south faces

Avalanche Details
If this is an avalanche observation, click yes below and fill in the form as best as you can. If people were involved, please provide details.
Trigger NaturalRemote Trigger No
Avalanche Type Dry Loose SnowAspect North
Elevation 3900ftSlope Angleunknown
Crown DepthunknownWidthunknown
Vertical Rununknown  
Avalanche Details

A few Dry loose were visble under rocky and steep terrain.

Weather & Snow Characteristics
Please provide details to help us determine the weather and snowpack during the time this observation took place.
Weather

Sunny and 19°F around 9am at TH. Sun has warmed up snow surface on south facing slopes for our exit run around 3PM to a decent corn skiing. On the north aspect it was cold with and with a chilly breeze.

Snow surface

On the ridges snow was mostly soft. some wind effect varying from icy patches, soft sastrugi, soft wind deposits and plagued with hidden rocks beaneath shallow layer of new snow. Well developed surface hoar were present on north faces on all elevations and with a considerable amount of graupel at mid elevation, not as much as we got closer to the ridge but still could see it sprinkled around.

Snowpack

no formal pits but there was a supportable crust beneath the new snow.

Photos & Video
Please upload photos below. Maximum of 5 megabytes per image. Click here for help on resizing images. If you are having trouble uploading please email images separately to staff.