Avalanche: Turnagain

We skied a southerly line off the high ridge then climbed out of the drainage by way of one of the steeper sections of the southerly slope below the main, lower ridge. We then climbed the main, westerly face again and skied the southern shoulder that in the past has served as the exposed uptrack.

There was a good amount of sluff management on the steep southern line but the more interesting part of the day was the suddenly noticeable sun effect. On our uptrack back to the lower ridge, we had multiple collapses from 2,000 to 2,500 feet. The two variables that were noted on these collapses were that they occurred in concavities and they happened right as we were starting to notice how much warmer it was in the sunlight. The new snow became noticeably heavier, not springtime heavy, but enough to wake us up out of our mid winter “what’s sun effect” daze. All southern slopes that we could see throughout the day had active point releases spilling debris into gullies. And a glide crack released on the south slope of Shark’s Fin at some point during the day.

We did not find any wind effect on the ridge and there was no transport happening throughout the day.