Avalanche Incident 30 Jan 08

Info taken from websites.

There are reports of a burial on a south facing Goryu ridge in Hakuba, terrain features usually assumed to be safe(r) for travel on unstable days. I don't know the details, but the buried person was found alive after 5 minutes of beacon search and digging.  These popular side country routes have been very unstable for the last few days, and very obviously unstable at that. This was not an unexpected incident by any means.  Recent weather has produced crusts on all aspects with 30-40cm new snow, which started out less dense and became a little heavier, thus forming a more cohesive slab on top of a weaker lay that didn't bond with the crust.  Winds have been very light and on shaded northerly aspects there are areas of buried surface hoar up to 10mm in size.  This is also sitting on the crust, adding to the instability and variability of avalanche conditions across small areas.  I found that lower altitude stability was worse than higher due to warmer and denser snow forming more cohesive slabs that propagated 50m when fractured, rather than loose dry snow sluffing off the crust in single points.