| Trigger | Skier | Remote Trigger | No |
| Avalanche Type | Soft Slab | Aspect | Unknown |
| Elevation | 1800ft | Slope Angle | unknown |
| Crown Depth | 8in | Width | 25ft |
| Vertical Run | 10ft |
Avalanche: Girdwood
Location: Notch
We toured up to Notch to make sure that it was actually snowing and blowing, and we weren’t disappointed. We saw heavy snow and strong winds with conditions picking up through the day and around 8″ snow on the ground by noon. We triggered a few small storm slab avalanches on short but steep rollovers.
Avalanche Details
Small storm/wind slabs on short but steep terrain features.
Obvious signs of instability
| Recent Avalanches? | Yes |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | No |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | Yes |
Observer Comments
Shooting cracks on wind loaded slopes.
Weather
Steady rain up to 500' elevation on our way up, with strong winds as soon as we got out of the forest at around 1600'. Snow intensity picked up while we were out, and the rain line was down to around 300 feet on our way back down.
Snow surface
Strong winds made it hard to tell just how much it had snowed, but sheltered areas had around 8" new snow on the ground. Some places were scoured down to firm surfaces, others were loaded 18-24" deep.
Snowpack
We didn't dig pits today, but found easy shear failures in hand pits along the skin track on the way up. Test slopes had to be pretty steep to get slabs to fail, but slopes with tender wind slabs on the surface were more reactive. We triggered a few small wind/storm slabs while we were skiing, about 8-10" deep on average.
We'll be paying close attention to see how well this new snow sticks to the old snowpack, and keeping an eye on the facets that got buried earlier in the week.
We checked, and it was indeed stormy out there. Photo: Rich Dijulia, 01.07.2024
Skier-triggered storm slab about 8" deep on a short but steep rollover. Taken with a moist cell phone. 01.07.2024