Natural Slide on Quandary Today (1/25/10)

[seekanddestroy99]

A friend and I hiked to ski low-angle glades at Quandary Peak today below treeline on an east to south-east facing slope near the mine. At about 1pm, as we neared treeline, we heard an extremely loud crack and rumble. To me, it sounded like thunder, and to my buddy, he thought someone was doing avalanche explosives above. Sure enough, as we were able to see, the large north by north east facing bowl at about 12,500 feet had slid naturally, and the avy debris was already being covered by snow carried by the wind. It did not slide to the ground, and we were unable to tell how deep or wide it slid, but there was a significant amount of debris in the lower half of the bowl. We made our way over to the aspect we were going to ski, and as we were removing our skins we heard another crack from higher on the mountain, though not as loud, and probably on a similar aspect.

There was only one other car at the trailhead, but we saw the owner on her way down about 20 minutes after we left our car. We assumed no one else was on the mountain.

The rather flat ski down was fine, with no whoomfing and only one small crack about 2 inches deep on flat terrain right next to the mine. We are definitely not headed above treeline anytime soon in Summit County with the current winds.

Be careful out there!

[GravityPilot]

Thanks for the report. If you haven't already, send this info CAIC's way. Glad you weren't in it. Cheers.

[seekanddestroy99]

I literally copied and pasted this from the report I sent to CAIC. Just thought I should give a heads-up here too.