| Trigger | Natural | Remote Trigger | Unknown |
| Avalanche Type | Unknown | Aspect | Southeast |
| Elevation | 3600ft | Slope Angle | unknown |
| Crown Depth | 12in | Width | 100ft |
| Vertical Run | 500ft |
Avalanche: Seward
Location: Snug Harbor to Lost Lake
Rode from the end of Snug Harbor road through V-Max hill and over to Lost Lake and the weather station. Got the weather station back up and running, yay!
Avalanche Details
Recent D2 wind slab avalanche, SE face around 3,600’. Likely ran sometime overnight or this morning (see photo).
Obvious signs of instability
| Recent Avalanches? | Yes |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | No |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | No |
Observer Comments
Wind loading on easterly aspects along the high peaks till midday by the northwest winds.
Two wind slabs. One larger mentioned earlier and a smaller slab along the same ridge.
Weather
Sunny and cold. Single digit temps warmed up to around the teens.
Ridgetop NW winds were blowing enough to transport snow off the high peaks until midday. Light breeze to calm in valley bottoms and mid elevations.
Snow surface
Variable. Soft settled powder in V-Max drainage. Everywhere else it was highly wind effected. A lot of sastrugi, hard wind pillows and scoured zones from Boulder Creek to Lost Lake.
*Too cold for south slopes to heat up today, even in lower elevation areas out of the wind.
Snowpack
We dug two pits in the V-Max area on a northerly aspect at 2,300’.
Pit #1 HS 290cm
ECTP 17 30cm down on stellars and near surface facets sandwiched in between 2 wind slabs
ECTP 26 50cm down on buried surface hoar (3-5mm) sitting on a pencil hard surface
Pit #2 HS 320cm
ECTN 14 30cm down on setallars and near surface facets under a hard wind slab and over 1 finger hard snow
ECTN 28 55cm down on buried surface hoar (3-5mm) sitting on pencil hard snow
We felt the biggest concern was fresh wind slabs sitting on weak snow.
There was a lot of old avalanche activity from March 12th storm. All activity seemed to be composed of that storm snow and didn’t look to step down into buried weak layers such as the buried surface hoar we found.
Recent wind slab avalanche
Wind transport off high peaks above Snow River drainage near Seward
Extreme wind effect in many areas between Lost Lake and Boulder Creek near V-Max hill
One of our snow pits on a north aspect, 2300' near the site of an avalanche burial earlier this year and a fatality 4 years ago.
Weather station maintenance by CNFAIC forecaster Andrew and Trampus, one our USFS Law Enforcement Officers
Andrew sampling the soft settled powder near V-Max