Small natural soft slab avalanches on Mt. Lola

Two small natural soft slab avalanches occurred during the early morning hours at this location. One avalanche still appeared fresh at 11:30am with minimal new snow covering the debris. The other adjacent avalanche appeared to have occurred 1 to 2 hours earlier than the second as the crown was slightly filled in and the debris were covered with a few inches of snow.

A number of test pits in this area revealed anywhere from 30cm to 70cm of wind loaded snow. Close to the ridge, a 4F hard wind slab 10cm to 25cm thick existed on top of lower density, less wind affected storm snow. Several test pits dug on wind loaded portions of the summit bowl just to the south (climbers left in the photo) of the avalanches easily identified the wind slab that failed in these two avalanches. Several attempts at each location failed to replicate the previous fracture propagation using the ECT and PST. Approximately 100' down slope from the ridgetop, no wind slab existed. This points to very soft slab avalanches and explains the absence of angular avalanche debris below the two natural avalanches. Very large cornices made approach for direct crown profile observations unsafe.

Several snowmobile cuts on wind loaded test slopes in this area failed to produce any evidence of instability. Fair bonding of storm snow to the old snow crust at the base of the storm snow was observed. In wind protected areas around 20cm of new snow existed.