Dec 22, 2007, - Mt Catherine 300 vft gladed area
12/22/07
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2096
0
The longer story and pics are over at http://splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=4274. Here is the short version:
..When we arrived at some of the South aspect open glades on Mt Catherine we looked at stability just off the road and felt good about skinning up a little ways. We dug our pit at perhaps 300 vft above the road at around 4000 ft on a 31-33* slope. At this elevation and S facing we found the snowpack to be only about 5 ft deep to the brush and ground below. We isolated a couple columns that took several poundings from the shoulder to finally fail - top 18 inches to the first weak layer then another 2.5 ft down to the rain crust. We did a Rutschblock test as well that took 3-4 jumps to fail breaking all the way down to the rain crust.
We aren't snow scientists or experts so we won't theorize as to why we found relatively good stability in this one particular area during a "high" avy danger period. But, we reasoned that our observations gave us a green light for a couple laps on this aspect. The downhill was very sweet especially because accessing it was so outside the realm of our expectations for the day... riding the typical PNW powder we have grown to love and developed an addiction for. Nothing moved on us even though we started with gingerly turns and proceeded to enter-white-room heavy turns.
..When we arrived at some of the South aspect open glades on Mt Catherine we looked at stability just off the road and felt good about skinning up a little ways. We dug our pit at perhaps 300 vft above the road at around 4000 ft on a 31-33* slope. At this elevation and S facing we found the snowpack to be only about 5 ft deep to the brush and ground below. We isolated a couple columns that took several poundings from the shoulder to finally fail - top 18 inches to the first weak layer then another 2.5 ft down to the rain crust. We did a Rutschblock test as well that took 3-4 jumps to fail breaking all the way down to the rain crust.
We aren't snow scientists or experts so we won't theorize as to why we found relatively good stability in this one particular area during a "high" avy danger period. But, we reasoned that our observations gave us a green light for a couple laps on this aspect. The downhill was very sweet especially because accessing it was so outside the realm of our expectations for the day... riding the typical PNW powder we have grown to love and developed an addiction for. Nothing moved on us even though we started with gingerly turns and proceeded to enter-white-room heavy turns.
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