Herschal and I. Just awesome. The scene of a pristine powder bowl staring at us all day was awesome, and then at 1 they opened the hiking line and the boys went up and shredded it. It was beautiful.
We saw all the avalanches, 2 on Powder bowl and the big one down the thrown chutes that took the whole upper bowl of the left side of Chair 6. More photo's to follow of that never to be forgotten slide and incredible destructive week.
Here is the report from the website.
What's Fresh It was another sunny, beautiful spring day and the snow was nice and soft. Ski Patrol opened Powder Bowl just after 1pm with hiking access along the west ridge only. If you're willing to hike you'll be rewarded with pristine powder turns down the middle of the bowl. We received over a foot of new snow last week and the coverage is excellent from top to bottom. The groomed trails are buffed out wall-to-wall. The forecast is calling for sunshine through Monday with snow showers the rest of the week. All operations are weather and conditions permitting.photo.php
An avalanche destroyed a chairlift at the Crystal Mountain resort near Mount Rainier on Monday afternoon when the resort was closed. The avalanche was intentionally set off by the resort's ski patrol and no one was hurt.
Despite the destruction, patrollers say they have no regrets.
Ski areas routinely trigger avalanches to stabilize the snowpack before skiers and snowboarders arrive, but there's no guarantee any avalanche will go where they want it to. Crystal Mountain, for example, had triggered several avalanches the day before the one that took out the chairlift.
"Oh my god," she replies. Then, "Uh oh," as trees crack in the distance.
Explosives In A Snow Saucer
Kim Kircher was part of a three-woman team that set off a 25-pound explosive on one of Crystal's highest slopes on Monday afternoon.
The three ski patrollers hiked up a ridge above the mountain bowl called The Throne. They put the 25-pound explosive and its 90-second fuse on a plastic snow saucer.
With a rope, they lowered the explosive down the slope and took shelter behind the ridge, then behind a tree. To protect their eardrums from the blast, they plugged their ears and opened their mouths.
Kim Kircher said she knew something was different about this avalanche as soon as the blast went off.
It was just a thundering, ripping sound. Then I heard the timber breaking--there’s nothing like that sound. It’s very distinctive: "Oh yeah, there’s trees breaking. This is going big, you guys." And then we hear the sound of twisted metal, and we think, "Uh oh. We hit the chair."
Kircher said she'd never seen such a destructive avalanche in her 25 years patrolling at Crystal Mountain.
The slide toppled the resort's High Campbell lift, as ski patrollers discover to their (expletive-laden) dismay in the video below. Replacing the lift will cost about $1.75 million, according to Crystal Mountain officials.
Video contains strong language.
Potential For More
Northwest Avalanche Center director Kenny Kramer said the center had only heard ofone other large, slab avalanche in the Cascades in recent days: on Kendall Peak in the backcountry near Snoqualmie Pass.
"It tells me that we have the potential to see these large slides not just with a massive amount of explosives but also released naturally," Kramer said.
After a winter of long dry spells, Crystal Mountain received nearly 10 feet of snow in February and as much as 6 inches of rain in the past six days. Rain falling on snow can make the snowpack heavier and more prone to slipping downhill.
Kramer said none of this winter's events are that unusual in the Cascades.
"When you link them all together, that's what makes it unusual," he said. "The fact we had these long, cold, dry spells gave us layering that is unusual for us."
Kramer said the snowpack in Monday's avalanche ripped apart at a layer of snow that had fallen back in December, but whose crystals had been transformed and weakened by the cold, dry nights in December and January.
Kim Kircher said, though the avalanche caused more than $1 million in damages, she wouldn't have done anything differently.
"We are glad we did it because we did it when it was unoccupied," she said. "We know that the chances of this happening during the day were high if we didn't do it."
Her husband was planning to replace the destroyed chairlift in the next five years. Now he plans to do so this summer.
I'll post the exact article, but after a 3 ft dump, and avalanche patrol work belwo Chair 6, a slide blew the bottom of the chair away. Photo's to follow. I haven't been since I've been in the desert, hope to go Thursday.
Here is from Jeff and his trip on March 17:
"David, Sally and I went up today.We decided at 6am. Interesting day. 13 inches of the worst snow that I have ever skied in. Thick and heavy and probably some of the worst condition ever. It did get easier once it was cut up and groomed was great but man what an experience. Looks like Thursday might be a nice sunny groomer day but I'm tied up.
Maybe we are getting old but man what a struggle it was.
