Observation: Turnagain

Location: Magnum

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Several natural wind slab avalanches from Sunday morning are still visible on
Turnagain Pass. The winds have blown a bit of snow over the crowns making them a
little less obvious.

Most of Magnum’s west face avalanched and ran well below the alder line. There
appeared to be around 4-5 avalanches that took out most of the face. We looked
at the crown and bed surface. It appears these were wind slab avalanches that
either scoured down into the weak faceted layer or pulled out pockets of older
snow that failed into the faceted layer. There was significant propagation which
is more characteristic of the presence of a buried weak layer than solely a
fresh wind slab.

Crown details:
Width’s were ~100-400+’ (with several smaller pockets) and 1-2′ deep. Pencil
hard new wind slab 2-20+” thick – over 1 finger fragmented new snow – over
pencil hard old wind slab.

Wind slabs seemed to be in most areas on Turnagain Pass including, south facing
Tincan and Sunburst.

A small wet slab (~30-40′ wide) was seen in the alder line half way up on east
facing Seattle Ridge. Along with some wind slabs just above the gullies (~30-50′
wide).

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