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Blue Lake 25/8/13 - Avalanche Pics 27-Aug-2013 At 12:14:43 PM Capt_mulch

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From my experience it slides on top of the last consolidated snow. We were on the area that had released and were probing with ski poles (baskets removed) that were going in at least one and a half metres. There can be a quite thick layer of snow in that area. Consider the broken cliff to the right of the avalanche - during summer that is a massive stepped / broken cliff - at the moment you can't see any of that - it's way under metres of snow. The 2008 avalanche was 3 metres thick in places.

I suspect what happens is the last fall of snow consolidates and semi-melts then freezes again (I hit some of that heading from the Snowy River up towards Blue Lake, so much fun to ski / walk on). We then get a week of hell cold fronts that do a few good dumps - and cold fronts mean Westerlies, which scream over the top of the Main Range, picking up everything in their path and the first bit of good turbulence / snow fence / deceleration is Blue Lake (and exactly the reason why the glacier was there - in its death throes with global warming for the last 16 ish thousand years).

So, we might get 50 cm of snow, but the Westerly slopes at Blue Lake accumulate a metre, metre and a half over the top of a steep slope of super crusty snow. In these conditions some big cornices build up - right above the highly loaded steep slope to the right of Grey Buttress. I watched at least 50 metres of 2m x 2m cornice break off (peal like a wave), hit the slope below, and the whole slope instantly unloaded. Apart from the events that unfolded with it, it was majestic in its power and was truly awesome.

We probed in the area above the debris field (still bumbed about that - I know what could else have been done now - it's a bit like training for a tsunami) with the rescue team that turned up way later - they were using 3 metre probes - and it was still at least snow probe thick even after unloading.

Thumbs up to a time lapse photo shoot of the melt.