Angle Mountain Avalanche

Avi on Angle Mountain
Absoraka Range, Shoshone NF
Togwotee Pass Area
January 14th, 2007

Chuck eyes some potential goodness.

We're weren't sure where to go, but we wanted to try somewhere on Togwotee. It was way cold out so we didn't really want to go far on the snow machines. I was hoping maybe there'd be a trail punched into a bowl with lots of low angle terrain behind East Angle Mountain. Although the avalanche forecast was "moderate", we knew there had been alot of activity on Togwotee, so we all had our avi goggles on for the day.

What the thermometer looked like at my house when I got up.

The trail I was hoping for that head up into a bowl behind East Angle Mt had not been punched in yet. In fact, there really hadn't been a ton of snow machine traffic. Lots of great powder around though. Perhaps the cold temps was keep traffic at bay. We scratched our sno-go plan and headed out from the truck instead, towards what looked like some lower angle, smaller runs. We could see ski tracks on a similar aspect nearby that looked good. We thought maybe that was a good sign. We proceeded with caution.

Karla begins the climb. The snow looking and feeling good.

As we entered steeper terrain we spread out, especially across open slopes. This slope whooomped on us a little, with some hair-line cracks. It didn't go. It was a clue though, that we didn't ignore.

After Chuck wiggled around this area, a beautiful powder slope came into view. We were all hopeful it would be good. It wasn't super steep. It looked sooo good! After much discussion we picked route to the top that we agreed would probably be the safest in the event of an avalanche.

About two-thirds of the way up, our route began to skirt the edge of the open slope (SE facing). Chuck was in the lead, and Karla was behind me. I remember telling Chuck, "I wouldn't go out much further." He agreed and started to put in a switch back in when the slope above him started to move. I hollered, "There it goes! It's going, move back!" Chuck was trying, but it was hard. Yikes! Holy Crap!

When things stopped moving, Chuck was about five feet below me. We were both still standing, right on the edge of the slide path. Karla was safe behind us a ways. During the slide Chuck managed to move backwards enough to avoid getting sucked into the main slide. Whew!

Where our skin track ended. Chuck triggered a crack that shot up the edge of the slide path about a hundred yards, sending a 25 yard wide , 3 foot soft slab down our way.

Right in front of us the slide stepped down to a 3 to 4 inch hard slab that slid on depth hoar, pretty much to the ground.

Chuck expresses his thoughts about still being alive. When things stopped, I'm sure glad he was only five feet below me. It could have been much uglier.

The slide. The red arrow indicated where we were when we triggered it.

Me with the crown of the slide above. Bummer!

Chuck and Karla near the bottom of the slide. After it went, we looked for a different way to the top, be we couldn't find a safe route. After I experienced more whoompfing, we decided to retreat.

On our way back Chuck decided he wanted to dig around in the debri pile. We probed around a bit too. The debri pile was 6 to 7 feet deep in places. The regular snow pack was closer to 3 to 4 feet deep. It's doubtful that Chuck would have been buried deep in this slide, but you never know- 6 to 7 feet is enough. It would have been a scary ride for sure.

When we got back we started noticing quite a few slide paths that had ripped on South facing slopes. We didn't see these on the way in. Maybe we missed them, but I'm also thinking the fracture we initiated may have run over and around the ridge to cause some of these. Hard to say. Some of these ran with little more steam though.

The debri piles had small up-rooted trees and stuff in them.

Unfortunately, this was all I got for turns today. Oh well. I lived.

The slide from a distance.

A little closer view. The red was our approximate skin track going up. Click on the picture if you want to zoom in closer.