heather/skyline ridge avalanche

[Norm]

I've heard a couple of rumors about a slide on a south facing aspect near heather/skyline ridge yesterday (1/21). Anyone got any beta?

[gregm]

very interesting. i was up there yesterday. about 1.5 feet of new snow from the past couple days. we dropped down the north side of the ridge and i dug a pit just below the ridge. isolating a shovel sized column it sheared cleanly at three seperate depths as soon as a cut the back and *with no added weight*. i took this to be very bad avi conditions and we stayed in the trees and low angle. what struck me as very peculiar was that despite that very slidy shovel test we weren't sloughing anything off and saw no natural slides. i attributed this to the cooling trend.

my partner was having gear problems and we were back at the car by 2:00 so maybe we missed it.

[Norm]

Yeah, I've seen similar results skiing back there. It’s one of the reasons I tend to head to that area when the forecasted danger’s sketchy, hence my interest. I’ve heard and seen evidence of the steeper chutes running on the North side but never on the South face just above the parking lot. I’m wondering if it was that face or the South facing avalanche slope down the ridge past the radio tower.

[climb]

Apparently it was south facing:

"The sensitivity of the snow pack was evident Monday when numerous backcountry accidents occurred. Near Stevens Pass, a party of five triggered and was caught by a 1 to 4 foot fracture on a south-facing slope resulting in injuries. This slide released on a thin sun crust. A party of four also near Stevens Pass were caught, partially buried and injured by a triggered slab that is believed to have released down to the old rain crust. Yet another incident occurred in the Crystal Mountain backcountry were a skier triggered and was carried some 2 to 300 feet on an east to southeast aspect around 5000 feet and fortunately was not seriously injured. "

http://www.csac.org/Bulletins/Northwest/current-av.html