There was a pretty large natural slide that came down on the North side of gorman lake sometime in the last few days. South facing slope, and it looks like it was a pretty decent size.
I'm no expert, but my rule of thumb.....if you see something like that, you might want to stay off slopes of similar aspect. There's a December rain crust buried a few metres down that isn't consolidating very well, and as south facing slopes get loaded from sunlight there's an increase in probability that they may go. I couldn't tell how deep the crown on the natural slide was, but seeing as it was about 200 metres across and started at the peak....I'd say it was pretty big. The debris field made it down fairly close to the lake itself.
There is a really good paper Western Canada snow conditions that can be found at
http://www.avalancheinfo.net/Media/Persistent Weak Layers and the Winter of 2007-08.pdf
I suggest people have a look at it for a better understanding of what's going on.
I'm no expert, but my rule of thumb.....if you see something like that, you might want to stay off slopes of similar aspect. There's a December rain crust buried a few metres down that isn't consolidating very well, and as south facing slopes get loaded from sunlight there's an increase in probability that they may go. I couldn't tell how deep the crown on the natural slide was, but seeing as it was about 200 metres across and started at the peak....I'd say it was pretty big. The debris field made it down fairly close to the lake itself.
There is a really good paper Western Canada snow conditions that can be found at
http://www.avalancheinfo.net/Media/Persistent Weak Layers and the Winter of 2007-08.pdf
I suggest people have a look at it for a better understanding of what's going on.
