Avalanche: Turnagain

Location: Sunburst

Date:

March 31, 2019 4:00pm

Observer:

A. Johnston-Bloom Professional

Route & General Observations

Sunburst standard skin track to 3300′ in the later afternoon to see how the higher temps were affecting the snow and possibly observe natural glide, wet loose, wet slab activity.

Avalanche Details

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Trigger	Natural	Remote Trigger	0
Avalanche Type	Unknown	Aspect	South Southeast
Elevation	2400ft	Slope Angle	unknown
Crown Depth	unknown	Width	unknown
Vertical Run	unknown

Avalanche Details

Glide avalanche in motion observed at 4:30 pm on the south side of Tincan

Red Flags

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Obvious signs of instability

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

Observer Comments

Recent glide avalanches and watched one glide crack avalanche
No roller balls or sluffing observed.

Weather & Snow Characteristics

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

Weather

Clear skies
Light winds - there was a cool breeze from Taylor that was not felt on Sunburst Ridge or higher on SW face.
Temps in the high 30F - 40Fs slightly inverted.

Snow surface

Various stages of crust starting to soften or not.
Anything with a westerly or northerly kick and slope angle was rock solid.
Southeasterly lower elevation snow was very punchy at 5:30
SW stayed supportable throughout tour
NW at 2900' had small 1-2 mm surface hoar and a thin crust that was becoming faceted and facets below.

Snowpack

HS @ 900': 100 cm
HS @ 1500' 100 cm
HS @ 2000' 210 cm
HS @ 2500' over 280 cm probe to 160 cm
HS @ 3000' over 280 cm probe to 190 cm
Quick pit dug on NW aspect at 2900'. HS: 90 cm shallow spot. Thin melt-freeze crust faceting with small facets below over a very stout melt-freeze crust (25 cm thick) over faceting melt freeze grains. This aspect had small surface hoar on the surface crust. Will be worth keeping track of next time we get snow.

Photos & Video

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