Avalanche: Douglas Island

Location: Top of Heavenly

Date:
Observer:
Sam Steensland
Route & General Observations

I was curious how our snowpack responded to the last atmospheric river, so I toured up Eaglecrest and out Pittman’s Ridge to the top of Heavenly. Found stable snow and heinous breakable crust. Skied out West Bowl in full ACL-protection mode.

Avalanche Details
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Trigger NaturalAvalanche Type Unknown
Aspect UnknownElevationunknown
Slope AngleunknownCrown Depthunknown
WidthunknownVertical Rununknown
Avalanche Details

Numerous natural avalanches that occurred the last storm cycle and subsequent warm up. None of them appeared to have occurred in the last 24 hours.

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

Rain at the base at 8:30am but it quickly changed to a wintery mix. Light snow at the top and moderate winds from the West. 25°F at the top by mid day.

Snow surface

Breakable rain crust.

Snowpack

Dug a full pit on a 40° slope just skier's right of Surfers and found no obvious instabilities. Performed 2 compression tests and an ECT and did not get failures in either.
Snow was 120cm deep with 3 distinct ice crusts below the surface.

Location