Panorama Point Avalanche Potential

[BreezyD]

Anyone gone poking around there recently?

 

I'm looking for some information on the avalanche potential for this weekend near Panorama Point? Slim to none? ... ridiculously high? ... and if so ... why? Help educate me.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Brianna

[marylou]

This is a good place to find avalanche information.

[Sol]

Don't know what's going on down at mt rainier but i was touring around mt baker yesterday and this is my two cents. There is a pretty considerable windslab on w to nw facing slopes. slab layer is around 8-9 inches with lighter powder snow beneath it. layer was breaking easy through ski cuts and even through probing. high winds over the last few days have caused considerable variabilites depending on the aspect and terrain (wind slab, wind scour, powder, crust). i think things will be sliding and consolidating as the warm weather moves in today. a few natural slides were present on the nw facing slopes at the base of table mtn yesterday (blueberry chutes).

[Pandora]

CC and I were up there Sunday...nobody else had gone up the winter route on Pan Point, so we started putting in a skin track. The top few inches of snow was breaking up with every step, so we stopped and dug a pit. There was about 8" of fresh on top of "deep, homogenous wet cement chunkage", as d00d put it. There were no other discernible layers. It was good skiing, but the visibility was less than great, so we dropped into the Edith Creek basin and did a few runs there.

 

FRESHIEZ!

[mtn_mouse]

Avalanche danger in Idaho is really huge right now. Of course this isnt Mt Rainier, it is Idaho. And everyone knows, Idaho is much better.

 

Snowmobilers who out-ran avalanche rescue buried woman

 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

LEWISTON, Idaho -- A Clarkston, Wash., woman is recovering from multiple injuries after she was buried by a large snow slide near McCall before being rescued by fellow snowmobilers who managed to outrun the avalanche.

 

Melvina Ross, a 46-year-old nurse, suffered a fractured spine and damaged lung after being buried Saturday beneath two riderless snowmobiles carried down the slope by a slide near Hidden Lake.

 

"I just remember being under the snow screaming," she told The Lewiston Morning Tribune. "I knew I had one foot out. I could wiggle that one foot really good."

 

Ross and her husband Tom were standing at the base of the hill 300 to 400 feet away watching other riders "high marking" - riding as far up the slope as possible before losing traction - when the avalanche started. Their son Brian spotted her foot protruding from the snow and the group began frantically digging to remove her from beneath the two overturned snowmobiles and hard-packed snow.

 

Tom Ross dug to her helmet, brushed the snow from her face and pulled her out of the hole.

 

"She didn't come around at first," said Tom Ross, an operating room nurse. "After maybe 15 seconds she started batting her eyes, looked around and its just like she woke up."

 

The previous day, a Bellevue, Idaho, snowmobiler was killed in an avalanche about 20 miles northwest of Ketchum. Authorities identified the victim as Boe Balis, 28. The Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center has been reporting deep instability in the late winter snowpack since the end of March.

[Norman_Clyde]

I was up there today. It didn't snow today but the ranger said it's snowed every day for several days recently. There must have also been some sun yesterday, because nothing was fresh and everything was really heavy. There is evidence of big sluffs on mostly NE aspects in the Tattoosh, but no slab releases visible. It was very warm, must have been 60 degrees in the parking lot.

 

I got to the lot just before a group of 5 rangers who skinned up behind me. On the flats I kept busting a thinly buried slab, 6 to 8 inches thick. There were no slab releases at Pan Point, but many sluffs and pinwheels, and no skin or ski tracks. As I was solo I was inclined to be careful. Given the evidence of a poorly supported heavy crust, I was not inclined to be the first to test the bowl, so I went up the winter route. I dug about a 3 foot pit which showed no discernible cleavage planes and would only shear when levered off. (Don't ask me what grade that is.) The snow has a high water content, i.e. it's VERY heavy.

I tried booting through the trees on the ridge line but quickly was wallowing deeply, so I just skinned the least steep line on the southern aspect, which was uneventful. The rangers then skinned up various aspects of the bowl, without triggering anything. I think they also dug some pits so they may have a technical report.

 

Above Pan Point, there are a few SE facing short steep precipices which had been wind loaded. The first was small enough that I decided to skin across it, which set off a heavy 6 inch wet slab, very slow moving, only went a few feet onto the flat (this was all of the loaded part for that slope). It wasn't scary but it was embarrassing, since I did it in front of a ranger. I avoided the remaining similar slopes more carefully. Above McClure rock, of course it was windblown slab and crust.

 

The temp dropped significantly through the afternoon, and by the time I got back to the wind loaded slopes I had much less concern about wet slides. I skied down them without setting anything off. The rangers had tested Pan Point by then and it was likewise stable.

 

Maybe more than you needed to know. At any rate, more snow is predicted this week. There is not much surface crust yet, so the new snow will probably add to the deep heavy layer and pose a risk mostly for wet spring slides in warm conditions.