Home > Trip Reports > May 8, 2018, White Salmon Glacier Avalanche

May 8, 2018, White Salmon Glacier Avalanche

5/8/18
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Posted by johnbaldwin on 5/9/18 12:54am
While touring up Slate Mountain we witnessed a large class 4 avalanche sweep down the skiers right side of the White Salmon Glacier. It appeared to be triggered by snowfall off some rocks above the slope and released as a huge slab presumably on the perisistent weak layer that is so widespread right now. It occurred around 11am and swept the entire basin at the bottom of the glacier. Hope no one was over there. From Slate we could see at least half a dozen crown lines on slopes from Herman over towards Laziocarpa Ridge, Hadley Peak etc.
Damn. Hope no one was out there.

It's still real out there.. hopefully, travelers are thinking about the potential huge results of cliff sluffs and cornice failure.  thanks for sharing this ob.

We climbed via the Sulfide Monday it was super hot in the afternoon, we went up to the point on the far right ridge in your picture on our descent. We sat and watched towards the Curtis/WS zone for an hour or so expecting something big to happen. No action for us though.

That's freaking HUGE!  Is the general assumption that this is still the weak layer from mid-February?  Seems sort of unprecedented in my memory. 

Big slope. Yikes.

author=dberdinka link=topic=40662.msg161517#msg161517 date=1525892276]
Is the general assumption that this is still the weak layer from mid-February? 


not that I know--but judging from the crown in the photo, and the big snow storms dumping several feet at higher elevations we had at the beginning of April, it seems a crown from Feb. would entail a deeper profile

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johnbaldwin
2018-05-09 07:54:42