Avalanche: Hatcher Pass

Location: Marmot Mid-rib

Date:

March 14, 2022 7:43pm

Observer:

Allie Barker Forecaster

Route & General Observations

Toured from Goldmint up to IM and Marmot to look at upper elevation stability and figure out what the culprit weak layer was for the recent avalanches on Saturday. We found buried surface hoar sitting on top of a melt layer recrystallization (MLR) crust that formed somewhere around Feb 24th. Riding conditions were excellent. Southerly aspects has approx 4″ of moist snow by afternoon and many small wet loose were observed. Recent cold overnight temps have improved riding and are the reason for D1-D1.5 dry loose sluffs which were observed on steep slopes above 40deg in the morning.

Avalanche Details

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Trigger	Natural	Remote Trigger	Unknown
Avalanche Type	Wet Loose Snow	Aspect	South
Elevation	3500ft	Slope Angle	unknown
Crown Depth	unknown	Width	unknown
Vertical Run	unknown

Avalanche Details

Numerous D1 wet loose sluffs observed the afternoon on steep southerly aspects below 3500'.
Few D1-D1.5 dry loose sluffs observed on all aspects in the morning while temps were still cool below 5000'.
No new slab avalanches observed today.

Red Flags

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Obvious signs of instability

Recent Avalanches?	Yes
Collapsing (Whumphing)?	No
Cracking (Shooting cracks)?	No

Observer Comments

Wet loose and dry loose sluffs were observed today. For the most part, these are surface instabilities and manageable hazards.

Weather & Snow Characteristics

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

Weather

no new snow since 3/9
calm winds today
4500'/Marmot reported 25 deg at 4500 feet today felt like 40 deg
3550'/IM reported a high of 25 deg at 1pm
4050'/Gold Chord reported 32 deg at 1pm

Snow surface

The snow surface consists of mostly rounds , some NSF, and a variety of thicknesses of crusts up to 4" thick on mostly southerly aspects.

Snowpack

4200' NW aspect
38 deg slope
HS 260cm
217 Buried surface hoar 2-4 mm in size, mostly laying down, decomposing
217-215 Melt layer recrystallization crust
rounds below that until deep weak layers but goal was to focus on surface instabilities.

Photos & Video

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