Avalanche: Turnagain

Location: Magnum Northwest Aspect

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Started at the Cornbiscuit lot. Toured up Magnum and accessed changing snow conditions throughout the day. Went up to practice digging snow pits. Found good skiing on the way down on wet surface snow.

Avalanche Details
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Trigger NaturalRemote Trigger No
Avalanche Type UnknownAspect Southwest
ElevationunknownSlope Angleunknown
Crown DepthunknownWidthunknown
Vertical Rununknown  
Avalanche Details

The glide avalanche was located below the larger glide crack on Eddies shoulder.

Red Flags
Red flags are simple visual clues that are a sign of potential avalanche danger. Please record any sign of red flags below.
Obvious signs of instability
Recent Avalanches?Yes
Collapsing (Whumphing)?No
Cracking (Shooting cracks)?No
Observer Comments

Glide avalanche observed on Eddies Shoulder.

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

When we arrived at the parking lot there were scattered clouds, temperatures were just above freezing with a calm northeast wind and no precipitation. By the afternoon, at our high point of 2500 ft the sky was overcast with light flurries, temperatures hovering right around freezing with calm winds coming from the east.

Snow surface

While ascending there was a melt freeze crust on the surface. After a morning of sun and warm temperatures the surface of the snow softened.

Snowpack

We dug two pits at 2500 feet on a NW aspect of magnum. We found a layer of 3mm buried surface hoar starting to round between 40 and 50 cm down. The surface hoar was under one finger slab. We had consistent test results with column tests showed instability on the buried surface hoar with a sudden planar (CT21 SP) and another Sudden planer that occurred in overdrive (over 30 taps). We had one ETC yielding a full propagation at 25 (ECTP 25) the other had no reactivity (ECTX).

Photos & Video
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