Avalanche: Horse Creek Chutes

I remotely triggered this avalanche while stomping around the skier's left side of Coyote Chute. I felt and heard a BIG, LOUD collapse. It felt like I dropped a couple inches. I walked up the ridge to find this large avalanche in the Horse Creek Chutes. I measured a maximum depth at the Crown of 6.5 feet. In places, the crown was only about 2 feet deep. The average depth is about 4 feet. The avalanche was much deeper on the down canyon side, near Coyote, and more shallow on the up-canyon side towards Pre-Laurel Peak. The up-canyon side averaged about 2 feet deep. This variation in depth illustrates how this slope has been alternately scoured and loaded all season long, and in some places is very shallow, while the heavily wind loaded areas are very deep. The slope angle of 36 degrees is an average of measurements I took while walking around the bed surface. The slope rolls over to steeper than 40 degrees about half way down.

Over the past 10 days the La Sal Mountains have received 36" of snow and 2.2" of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE). The past 10 days have been a very windy period with Moderate to Strong winds shifting from all directions. Avalanche forecasts have warned about deep slabs of wind-drifted snow overlying weak facets on Northerly aspects. The avalanche danger on 1-15-24 was rated CONSIDERABLE for this slope (NE, ATL).

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