Photo Gallery
All of the photos on this page are "thumbnails", so--just click on them to enlarge. The following 3 photos in the photo documentary are courtesy of Doug Chabot--Gallatin N.F. Avalance Center. The new "surface hoar" photo (lower right, below) was shot at Henrys Lake on 1/25/06.
The slide path on the
right in this photo is of a 500' wide X 1,000' long event at 10,000'
elev. on Sheep Mtn. near Cooke City, MT on
1/22,05. The slope aspect was N-NE. Four riders went up the slope and
over the ridge into the basin above. The slide was
triggered
as the last machine crossed the fracture line, and none of the riders
knew they had started an avalanche. A sympathetic release occurred on
the left side of the slope at the same time.
This is a closeup of
the
triggered
slide at left. Not knowing they had triggered the slide, the 4 riders
turned around in the upper basin and rode over the
blind
crest
of
the ridge in the left side of this photo, (see tracks) and dropped over
the 7' fracture line. They took a nasty ride through the rocks. One was
seriously injured. They
were very fortunate they were not caught in the avalanche when it slid.
The results would have been MUCH different.
Surface hoar layer on
1/25/06. Thisis an example of the type of
crystals that form on cold, clear
nights, and become the unstable
layer that causes many slab
avalanches when buried by new
snow.
This
column sheared in a snow pit near the two avalanches above. As stated
by Doug Chabot of the MT Avalanche Center: "It doesn't take much
imagination to see the
consequences of a slide" under these conditions of thick, dense layers
(as evidenced by this large column) sitting on top of a weak layer of
faceted snow.