Unaffiliated / Individual

Pit dug at crown of avalanche. Extremely deep snowpack, not typical of most areas people will be skiing. Extreme depth due to wind loading, sluffing, and previous avalanching from above. There was a significant amount of vegetation in the bottom of this pit. The open air space around the vegetation caused facets to form from 90cm to the ground. Graphically this looks shocking in the pit profile, but I would not expect to find this snowpack structure on similar slopes. The take home point is the slab, and the weak layer that failed and caused the avalanche.

Ohuemman lumipeitteen alueilla testeissä tuloksia, yli metrin alueilla ei juurikaan.

Suspect error in temperature readings. Pit location is along side of road which sees traffic from skier/hikers, possibly impacting snow conditions. Recent snowfall of 12+ inches created storm snow concern on top layer. Otherwise snowpack was fairly compact slab on depth hoar.

Depths are along the face of the crown (perpendicular to slope). The weak layer above the sliding surface was very subtle and hard to detect. We estimate the sliding surface formed in Mid Dec. See accompanying field observation notes.

Dug a full profile pit for practice. Neglected to measure PS and PF. Was focused on identifying layers, hand-hardness, and snow grains and neglected get a full temperature profile. Incomplete and likely inaccurate because of possible misreading of dial on thermometer Did not have time to perform an ECT in this pit. Made a mistake when measuring depths of tests. Uncertain how accurate they are. Definitely learning...

Wind were blowing, but pit site did not have fresh drifts.