Avalanche: Other Regions

Location: Whittier- Lowell Peak Shoulder

Date:

February 14, 2024 8:05pm

Observer:

Grant Slesser

Route & General Observations

Parked at the end of the road nearest Lowell shoulder. Skinned across the creek and headed up the shoulder.

Avalanche Details

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Trigger	Natural	Remote Trigger	Unknown
Avalanche Type	Wet Loose Snow	Aspect	South Southeast
Elevation	1200ft	Slope Angle	40deg
Crown Depth	unknown	Width	unknown
Vertical Run	unknown

Avalanche Details

Previous warming and or rain looked to have caused roller balling in various locations and a wet loose avalanche that triggered a small slab.

Red Flags

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Observer Comments

Flagging of peaks everywhere although calm up to about 2k.

Weather & Snow Characteristics

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

Weather

Clear sky's, warm temps 35-40 deg, calm winds up to about 2k then ramping to moderate if not high winds at times above that.

Snow surface

Quite the variety of surface conditions were encountered in my travels. Ice rink parking lot, creamy corn, warm sastrugi, supportable buff and rime capped cold snow. I stuck to the lowest angle I could reaching about 30 degrees on the shoulder and ascended to about 2900ft.

Snowpack

I dug twice, first @ 1500 ft pit results ECTN 14 which broke about 30 cm's down on rounding facets. Mostly right side up otherwise. 2nd quick pit @ 2400ft where I just conducted a hand harness test and It seemed even stronger. I stuck to slope angles 30 degrees or less.

Photos & Video

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