4/13/2013 Snoqualmie Mountain wants to slide

See the following video.  Shooting cracks followed by a remotely triggered slide in a small opening.  Small crack shot over convexity, which in the video I didn't even notice at first (just saw some snow moving in the trees).  The alpine and Phantom were out of the question, and the snow rate was simply phenomenal.  Between the rapid loading and other signs we decided our time was better spent leaving then digging a pit just to discover it was Q1, 1st tap with propagation.  So no proper pit.

4,560' elevation, 12:20pm, SW aspect.  I think snowfall was 1.5-2"/hr.  The snow falling towards midday resembled hoary balls that may have been graupel that occasionally rolled downhill; if it stays cold I would worry about a future layer rolling on this easily.  Even in the trees we were trying to chose our line wisely......except until lower down where we got too far skier's right, got cliffed out, and had to do a short rappel. But that kind of story is for another section.



(yes, the skiing was actually phenomenal.  That's the devil's deal on days like this)


In this pic the trigger point (where the crack shoots off my ski in the video) is out of frame to the right near the trees. If you look carefully you can see the crack split in two before triggering. All the other junk is our ski tracks.

good to know, thank you for posting this.

Great post, thanks for sharing.

A group of us were at Kendall today and saw a slide come down between the 2nd and 3rd lakes about 100' from us and promptly decided to turn around. Traversing in the woods, some steeper pockets above us were remote triggering. It's pretty sketchy out there, and deep!

Wow!

Thanks for this post. Touchy to say the least

We found similar storm snow instability/reactivity when approaching Great Scott Basin (SW & above Source Lake) in the Alpental side-country this morning; see photo of one easy trigger that ran in Big Trees area. Needless to say, we pulled the plug on this objective & went elsewhere for powder-licious tree skiing instead.

Wow, we were headed for Big Trees but turned back after a few tree-well test hops showed poor stability. Bailed and did a few laps at West, which was pretty good!

Scary. Man, that it is as ready to go as it comes. Was it that bad yesterday too???

In the cascades, when it's April and dumping on a hard base, its going to want to slide off.  Also, it is ALWAYS going to be warmer (maybe just a few minutes!) later and want to slide off even more!  If it continues to dump, natural slides WILL be widespread.  Last Saturday and Sunday showed this quite well (Stevens backcountry/Sidecountry).  No need for pits or tech savy.  Stay low angle or EXPECT that it will slide, especially later in the day.  If enough snow gets into the steep trees, it will slide off there too!  On Sunday, it cleared and many slopes were showing naturals from late Saturday.  Both slab fractures and steep tree/cliff sluffs were evident on all aspects.  With caution (avoid climbing anything that hasn't slid, ++++), some slopes that had already slid were "do-able".

would have thrown my 2 cents in earlier were it not for the lack of an internet connection...
good stuff, thanks for the post.

Was it that bad yesterday too???

nope, it seemed to have settled quite well in 24 hours.  We went past cprahl's point of return for some sunshine powder -



- and to avoid Alpental congestion (hooray for that (and low expectations)). 
A short skin turned out quite nice!

What a contrast between the two days. Witnessed a slope that many had skied and skinned across on Saturday up on W. Kendall rip out circa 3:30 pm... quite sobering. Luckily no one was on it.  Fun snow though.  And always a learning experience.