Unintentional D1 on Red Lake Peak

Location Name: 
West gullies of Red Lake Peak
Region: 
Carson Pass Area
Observation Date & Time: 
Friday, April 10, 2020 - 12:00
Location: 
38.715800, -119.996300
Is this an Avalanche Observation?: 
Yes


Conditions Alerts:


Terrain Alerts: 
Slopes Steeper than 30 degrees
Obvious Slide Path
Trigger Points
Terrain Traps
Terrain Matches the Advisory

Observation made by: Professional Observer

Tabs

Observation
Description of Snow, Weather, and Avalanche Conditions: 

We avoided a more wind loaded feature from the summit of Red Lake Peak, but dropped our guards after descending the first 2 pitches of our low angle route. We unintentionally triggered a D1 hybrid wind slab/dry loose on a very small but steeper roll, and the amount of wind loading this far from the summit was unexpected - especially considering how much new snow we still found on E aspects along our ascent, where we discussed the thought that less wind transport might have occurred than originally anticipated. Snow under the crust on this side of Red Lake Peak was moist and not weak.

Pic 1: Looking up at the crown from about 20ft below. The pano makes this look much bigger than it was - for scale, the crown on the left near the rock was about 1.5 feet, it quickly tapered to about 6 inches, and the width was only about 30 feet. 

Pic 2: Looking down the path from 50ft below the crown. Besides the trigger point, the rest of this path was generally low angle, but due to the constriction and light snow over a shallowly buried crust, the debris ran quite far downslope. In no place was the debris deep enough to bury a person.

We debriefed this unintentional trigger, and decided that it would have been an easy and safe ski cut. But we misjudged the amount of windloading this far downslope and didn't discuss this option prior.

Hide Avalanche Details
Avalanche Type: 
Wind Slab
Failure Plane/Weak Layer: 
New/old snow interface
Additional number of similar avalanches: 
More than 10
Hide Trigger
Trigger: 
Snowboarder
Trigger Modifier: 
Accidentally Triggered
Hide Terrain
Start Zone Slope Angle: 
40degrees
Aspect: 
West
Starting Elevation: 
above-treeline
Hide Size
Destructive Size: 
D1 Relatively harmless to people.
Relative Size: 
R1 Very Small
Crown Height: 
Less than 1 ft
Avalanche Width (Average width): 
30ft.
Avalanche Length (Vertical Run): 
500ft.
Hide People Involved
Number of people caught: 
1
Number of partial burials: 
0
Number of full burials: 
0
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