I was up on the chin on saturday and i got first tracks down
hourglass/hellbrook. First of all it was insane total whiteroom in
spots just totally bottomless. I did however get to wittiness a good
deal of avey activity. I was with fellow lister Christean a
snowboarder from stowe and we had broken trail up the chin and
basically had to race a group of ssaholes behind us who were
constantly trying to overtake us after we set the bootpack and busted
the traverses. I would have liked to study the snow pack but in the
heat of the race we didn't have time to rest let alone do anything
else. Luckily the group was 6 people so they had to keep re grouping
(our only saving grace) and we were able to stay narrowly ahead almost
the whole time. I ran into aveys in a few places. I dropped into
hourglass second and there was a very large slough coming down behind
me that would have carried me if it had had more vert to speed up in.
The snowfields above hourglass are relatively small so the snow hadn't
picked up as much speed as it could have. Ten we traversed left under
north ridge and i knocked off some slabs/cornices that startled me a
little on the top of the last pitch of the north ridge. That was my
first evidence of slab instability. Then as we got into hellbrook i
set off a couple small slabs. The largest slab i set off was in one of
the open pitches of hellbrook and i set off a 12" slab with a good 25
foot fracture line. It was slower moving and i just out ran it and
skied to the side. There is always the danger of getting carried over
a cliff like Alec Stall last year. For the most part though the burial
danger is low. There are so many anchors especially this year that it
is hard for a slab to get very big. The slabs on saturday weren't that
big either compared to the new snow. I think the wind transported
layer was slabbing and that was like 12" there was still a foot or two
of fresh below it. Its the most avey activity i've ever seen in a day.
Its hard to get into the avalanche mindset at a place like stowe too.
Allen

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