Snowpack properties for snow profile analysis

A Swiss–Canadian data set of over 400 snow profiles from skier-triggered slopes and slopes that were skied but not triggered was contrasted to derive statistically relevant differences that can be used in snow profile interpretation. The critical weakness was identified either by the adjacent avalanche, rutschblock test or compression test. A failure layer and failure interface was identified in each profile. For discriminating between stable and unstable profiles, univariate analysis revealed the importance of the rutschblock score, failure layer hardness, failure layer grain size as well as difference in grain size and hardness across the failure interface. These same variables were used in two multivariate classification methods, which suggest that approximately 65% of profiles can be correctly classified with or without the stability test score.