Used up one of my nine lives today (2/14) when, approaching Stairway to Heaven and no more than 100' from the base of the ice, I got a huge "WHUMPF." No settling or visible cracks, but I beat a hasty retreat anyway to my partners, who were waiting/watching from the nearby ridge crest, and we bailed. Worth noting, the avy danger for the Northern San Juans was "only" Moderate for west-facing slopes near and above treeline which this is. No other signs of instability were noted prior to that point (though later in the day, when it was actually light out, we noted some old slide activity on the west-facing slopes right before the bridge at Eureka). Just proves the adage that, like politics, all avy conditions are local.

Climbed the first pitch of Whorehouse instead (in nearly constant spindrift from the high winds) which is in excellent condition. Winds on surrounding ridgetops appeared to be extreme so there's lots of transport and wind-loading in progress today.

Be careful out there.

FortMental wrote:How about the road past Stairway? See any debris covering it?

Wouldn't have given us a relevant clue to our approach (if that's what you were getting at) since it's 180 degrees different exposure. Didn't really look that far up the road to be honest as we figured the Gullys etc. would be death-routes under current conditions. We approached in the near-dark and on the way out we were focused on getting OUT! There was a fair amount of drifting right before the spot where you drop down to the creek to get to StH though, but not anything unusual or concerning.

Quite scary, sounds like the outcome could have been a lot worse. Glad it wasn't. The snowpack this year in general seems quite abnormal. I've heard more whoomphing than the previous 5 winters combined. After scoping out conditions along the Animas we recently decided to put the kabash on our highly anticipated trip into Chicago Basin... just not the right year to be pushing it.

As I said on the "Silverton Ice" thread, I was up there on Friday. We were headed for Stairway but because of the snow coming down, we decided to head up to Whorehouse Hoses since the approach is safer. We were hit by a couple of small powder avalanches and one fairly large one before we decided to run away.

The snowpack was about what we expected: Several inches of powder over a hard crust. Under the crust was a deep layer of sugar. Pretty stable without loading on top of it, but once loaded, it was time to find somewhere else to play.