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Real sobering report on serious avy conditions right now in VA lakes area, posted over on the ESAC forums:

http://www.esavalanche.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=89

Sounds like the ESAC forecaster is going to check this area out this week so hopefully we'll get more info on it.

Don't believe everything you read on the Intarwebs. PJ and I were joking (joking!) a couple weeks ago about posting scary avy stuff to keep people away, because I've noticed a significant reduction in people out there when the avy reports are more dire. Also I heared on the intarwebs that the poster is a "kook". And no, it wasn't me.

Sue Baruk will give us a reliable report that will confirm/deny the conditions. Lots of people are watching this.

Do you believe everything you read on the intarwebs?

There were 2 guys that posted basically identical results. Sure, it could be the same guy and he could be a kook. But if there's even a remote chance that this info is correct I want to know about it, especially since I'm planning on heading out not too far from there this week. I would like to see pictures of the 30-60 ft debris mentioned though!!


In today's avy report it says:


But, there's nothing additional on the discussion forum...

It seems [ JimW ] is not without a sense of irony. </Morpheus>

Sue has a post up now... and all it says is "test post". Arrgh.

Be careful at TPR, Jim. looks like they'll get 3 feet out of this storm... you bastards.

This seems like a weird observation to me. He dug 13-foot deep pits on multiple aspects?? What a champ! Eight feet of depth hoar buried under 5 feet of consolidated snow seems fishy. Wouldn't the snowpack be too deep for depth hoar formation unless the temperatures were very very cold? Still, I wouldn't go near it without hearing an observation from Sue Burak because that's really sketchy if its true. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say.

Sounds like Sue Baruk spent the whole day digging pits:

http://www.esavalanche.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=89

Seems like the issue is mostly a series slabs in top meter of the snowpack. I couldn't really understand whether the faceting lower in the snowpack is a problem...

Interesting discussion over there. The take home for me was the last paragraph:



Apparently the OP wasn't a complete kook after all...

Note that she did not mention the ultra-spooky-be-very-afraid 8++=+ feet of "depth horror!!!1!!1"

Yeah. Instead, she mentions that below the slab at 75-80 cm down, the weak layer was "faceted grains that were rounding", and that the snowpack below this was simlar. With a total snowpack depth of "over 3.2 meters", that works out to, oh, about 8 feet of the stuff. Hmm.

I didn't quite get the depth hoar discussion... it sounded like she was explaining that this weak snow wasn't actually depth hoar, and that depth hoar can become stable over time, but why discuss that if this isn't depth hoar? Maybe I'll just ask over there...

Maybe she was diplomatically trying to say the rounding faceted grains aren't the problem? She didn't seem particularly concerned about the bottom of the snowpack. It would be interesting to know how deep the Red Lake avalanche was.

Yeah, that was kinda confusing to us non-experts, I thought. It does sound like it will get interesting when things finally warm up. It's at least a month before the masses start going back there to Ginny Lakes, so maybe things will improve by then.

That Wall Run into Red Lake runs regularly and deep. There are natural a funnels at the bottom that focus it too. Never seen it 30-60' deep though.