Details

• Date: 2016/04/30

• Observer: Public

Location

• BC Zone: Front Range
• Area Description: Dragontail Couloir, skier's right (westernmost) entrance

Weather

• Weather Description: E aspect, Flattop mountain, 0745--1045, calm, overcast/obscured, occasional S-1 precip, summer trail to Dragontail west entrance, 25F at 0730, mild, calm throughout morning. Sun almost broke through for a brief period approximately 10:20 and with a high veil of clouds it got muggy quickly, then clouded back over.

Snowpack

• Snowpack Description: 20cm of new snow, moist in the parking area, dry and low(ish) density up high. New snow sluffing easily in couloir, sitting atop settled snow/rounds/old snow. Scratchy/firm underneath new snow. We ski-cut the entrance while on belay, without significant result. Sluffed into lower-angled terrain below. This was the pattern throughout our descent. Sluffs had some mass, but were fairly easy to avoid and manage while making turns.

Avalanches

• Avalanche Description: We observed another party of four involved in a natural D1.5 loose-snow avalanche, at 10:20. Mouth of Dragontail, where it opens onto the fan, caught one skier and carried him while he was booting. He broke a ski, lost a helmet, but was unhurt. He came to a stop on the apron where the debris fanned out. The party said it was a natural avalanche from above--perhaps from the eastern entrance (skier's left), as we had skied and sluffed-out the right (western) entrance during our descent. The incident occurred during the brief period of slightly more solar input during the "muggy" period mentioned above. We were climber's left of the couloir entrance, skinning up for a lap on the apron when we heard someone yell, looked up and saw the victim entrained in snow. He briefly went out of sight, but then rode the avalanche to a stop sitting upright. There was also loose dry debris at the bottom of the Dead Elk, the "S" couloir, and we had sluffed out the skier's right entrance of the Dragontail during our descent. We ski-cut the entrance to the Dragontail while on belay, without significant result--just sluffing. Skied the whole feature while managing small sluffs, but no slab avalanches observed. Sluffs were running without much energy and were pretty easy to avoid.

	Date	Location/Path	#	Elev	Asp	Type	Trig	SizeR	SizeD
	2016/04/30	Rocky Mountain National Park	1	>TL	S	L	N	R1	D1.5
Date: 2016/04/30 Time: 10:20 AM (Estimated) Area Description: Dragon Tail couloir Landmark: Rocky Mountain National Park Sliding Surface: I - New/Old Interface Average Vertical: 200 ft