Observation: Other Regions

Location: Sunburst

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

We saw this small avalanche on Tuesday 3/24/2009. This avalanche
is still big enough to knock you over, take you for a ride, and
bury you if there is a terrain trap at the bottom. We are not
exactly sure when it was triggered, but it seems like it would
have occured naturally on Sunday 3/22/2009 during the height of
the storm. I read a report of some skiers on Sunburst that same
day. They might have triggered this avalanche remotely without
knowing it because they reported no instability. Or this
avalanche might have occured naturally on Monday after the
surface snow slabbed up some more. There were no tracks leading
into this small slab; so, it was either natural or remotely
triggered. It is at a similar aspect and elevation to another
avalanche that we looked at on Tincan on 3/24/09. We confirmed
the weak layer at the Tincan location as buried surface hoar.