Snow-Slab Studies at Whistler Mountain, British Columbia, Canada

Open Access

1 January 1980

journal article
research article
Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Glaciology

Vol. 26 (94) , 85-91
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022143000010613

Abstract

A study of 30 slab avalanches at Whistler Mountain ski area, British Columbia, indicates that slab instability initiates with highest frequency on 40° slopes, that the temperature at the slab bed surface is about –5°C averaged for the 30 cases, and that on the average the slabs have a snow density of about 220 kg/m³. These results agree well with results from earlier studies. A rich variety of crystals appear in photomicrographs of samples extracted from the bed surfaces of the 30 slabs. In many cases, crystals extracted from the plane of critical weakness do not differ markedly from crystals extracted from adjacent strata.

Keywords

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:

Determination of the Mean Number of Bonds per snow grain And of the Dependence of the Tensile Strength of Snow on Stereological Parameters
Journal of Glaciology, 1978
Slab avalanche measurements
Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 1977