Observation: Hatcher Pass

Location: On terminal morane below War Bonnett aka Baby Ruth

Date:

December 5, 2017 1:00pm

Observer:

Blaine Smith Professional

Route & General Observations

We did a low angle tour up the west side of Independence Mine around Gold Cord Mine and back down to the parking lot. Things were not as touchy as I expected.

Red Flags

Red flags are simple visual clues that are a sign of potential avalanche danger. Please record any sign of red flags below.

Obvious signs of instability

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

Observer Comments

While we did have collapsing and shooting cracks (on all aspects though predominately on eastern aspects) we couldn't put the snow into motion as we expected. We say no naturals, or artificial (we were the only folks up there) triggered avalanches.

Weather & Snow Characteristics

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

Weather

S0 for most of the day. One period of S2 for 20 min at 15:30. We left shortly after that. Temps in mid 20s Wind from the ESE 10, gusting to 20.

Snow surface

Wind neutral sites Ski Pen: 10 cm Boot Pen: 85 cm. Highly variable. At 3500' 5cm new.

Snowpack

CT22Q2 down 55cm Bottom of the slab was a P hard M/F crust resting on a fist hard facet layer of 5 cm with 1 finger facets below that. We also had a ECTP30+Q2 and were able to aggressively burp out a storm slab 10 cm below the surface. This slab didn't show up in our tests and had to be stomped out from above the crown of an avalanche from Dec 3-4