Home > Trip Reports > Feb 12-15,2014, Mission Peak Natural Avalanche's

Feb 12-15,2014, Mission Peak Natural Avalanche's

2/12/14
WA Cascades East Slopes Central
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Posted by jtack on 2/13/14 1:40am
After the new snow, I wanted to see what was going on, so I took a quick ski to check things out.  At the 4500' sun/rain crust with soft snow under about 4 to 5 inches. The crust was everywhere, some places thick, some places thin.  In upper Clara lake basin, it was breakable crust, ski penetration variable, 1 inch to 5 inches. Came across these in the upper basin NE aspect.  Estimated start ~5500

Poor picture

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This one seemed to have failed on the ground, and I'm embarrassed to say may have covered our skintrack from the previous day.  There was another smaller slide that looked like it failed on the contact of this last few days of snow (~30cm down).  This rain/sun crust may well add another weak layer in the poison pile. I dug a pit and from what I could see the most reactive layer was 30 cm down, and the transformed snow at the ground contact.  There were multiple, crust/transformed layers in the ~100cm profile.
Scary.  Natural slides in areas we frequent.  I skied in-bounds yesterday (same time you were seeing this) and did not see similar.  I think maybe the ski area is a good place to be for a few days.

author=mikerolfs link=topic=30744.msg128648#msg128648 date=1392318282]
I think maybe the ski area is a good place to be for a few days.


Amen Brother.

Fantastic skiing today inbounds at Mission. LOTS of results from control work, explosive and ski cut.

So much for thinking the scree could still be providing some anchoring in the shallow snowpack!  A good safe lesson for me to remember, thanks for posting it.
John

When I was there with Mike in low snow conditions, I skied back to the inbounds area across an obvious steep avalanche slope and said something about "big slides and bad runnouts" I was particularly impressed by the huge terrain trap the basin below made. Is the ski area just left of those pictures? Thanks for posting. Stay safe.

As an amendment, just around the corner toward Mission, there was another natural release that took out the boundary ropes, and left a 5 or 6 foot debris pile on the terrain break.  There are still plenty of bear traps out there. 

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feb-12-15-2014-mission-peak-natural-avalanche-s
jtack
2014-02-13 09:40:08