Whitewater Backcountry Avalanche Conditions

I wanted to echo Bootroom's observations and concerns in his earlier post entitled "Spooky". I just returned from a day tour in Black Queen and White Queen where we dug a hasty pit at 2090m on a west aspect.

(click photos for a larger view)

As you can see above and below we had a CTM (2) fail on a layer of depth hoar that was about 7cm thick, it was planar but not sudden. The snowpak in this location was 215cm deep and this failure occurred 145cm from ground or down 70cm down from the surface. Upon continuing the compression test we had a second failure at 75cm from ground or down 140 CTH (7).

Once we skied around the obvious hazard we got a better view of what was going on below. The entire cliff face had failed naturally, likely on Friday or Saturday.

For all the details of the days tour have a look at the Suunto Movescount page here.

Please add to this discussion and let everyone know what you are seeing out there. 

Have fun but be safe.