| Recent Avalanches? | No |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | No |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | Yes |
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Sunburst
Quick tour up to Sunburst ridgeline ahead of the incoming storm. We bailed out at 2800’ due to poor visibility and active windloading. Snow quality was excellent.
Obvious signs of instability
Observer Comments
Baby shooting cracks at the time we decided to call it.
Weather
Skies obscured with few tempting suckerholes.
Temps below freezing.
Few snow flurries.
Winds calm at the start of tour. Ramped up ~11am with up to 40mph gusts on our ski down.
Snow surface
New snow amounts varied from 10-25cm, more snow than we expected at higher elevation.
Surface snow had wind structure 1800’ and above.
Found the buried surface hoar ~15cm below surface @2100’.
Snowpack
We did not do any formal snow obs or stability tests.
Main observation was active wind loading above 1800’. Wind slabs were definitely forming - we felt stiffer snow below our skis and noticed ~5cm soft wind slabs cracking.
We kept slope angles mellow and called the day short.
Winds started to ramp up at 11am. Very active westerly wind loading, in the photo towards northside of Magnum during a rare suckerhole moment.
We found up to 25cm of new snow at higher elevation. Ski pen ~15cm at common uptrack getting on the ridgeline. Hard travel conditions for a dog.