A moderate storm came through a few days ago dropping, in places, several feet of heavy wet snow. This set up conditions for some nice sized avalanches. Over the last couple of days I’ve been checking out one such avalanche not to far from home. I’ve seen this path run bigger, much bigger, but this was still an impressive slide. I don’t pretend to be a snow scientist so my observations are just that, what I saw.
This avalanche slid after the precipitation had stopped but the slope continued to be wind loaded for several hours. It appears that a very old, buried windslab collapsed on underlying faceted snow. This set the entire pack in motion, in some places taking the bed with it. It slid down slope for ~1000 meters entraining massive amounts of snow. Again, just my observation, but pretty cool.
Many of the photos might be a bit on the technical side, but I included some landscapes for good measure.
