Avalanche: Turnagain

Location: Seattle Ridge

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Rode up Seattle Ridge to clean off the weather station and get eyes on any avalanche activity or red flags that may be present. Big thanks to the rider just in front of us- who beat us to the station and freed the anemometer (wind sensor) from the rime coating it!

Avalanche Details
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Trigger NaturalRemote Trigger Unknown
Avalanche Type UnknownAspect Unknown
ElevationunknownSlope Angleunknown
Crown DepthunknownWidthunknown
Vertical Rununknown  
Avalanche Details

Evidence of many more natural wind slabs and cornice falls from very early Monday morning (1/24). They were pretty much on every aspect above 2000' and all were in the D2 to D1 range. Wind slab depths in the 1-2' range. Additionally, all of the storm activity appeared to have been composed only of the storm snow (did not look to have steeped down into any layers deeper in the snowpack).

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

Only a few cracks on some small cornices that were jumped on.

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

Obscured / foggy conditions until around noon then slowly the clouds broke and some sun poked through to everyone's delight.
A light freezing drizzle was present with the fog/low clouds and put a coating of light ice on the snow surface as well as ourselves.
Temps in the low 30'sF then dropped to the 20's by 3pm.
Light westerly winds along ridge.

Snow surface

Very thin crust from the warm foggy/cloudy air early in the day. You could hear it when riding or skiing, but didn't effect conditions.
Surface was pretty variable in general. The 8-10" of snow from Sunday/Monday's storm was highly wind effected. Areas of scouring and wind drifts with interesting snow features, cornices and moats.

Snowpack

No snow pits today. We did several hand pits and pushed on a lot of wind slabs that didn't budge. We were happy to get an ok look into Seattle Creek drainage and not see signs of large avalanches from the storm that had stepped into deeper layers of the snowpack.

Photos & Video
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