Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 12/15/2018
Name: Evan Ross
Subject: Colorado Backcountry Avalanche Level 1
Aspect: North East
Elevation: 9,600-10,800
Avalanches:
Weather: Rather delightful. Few high thin clouds and warmer temperatures climbing out of the valley. Calm winds at our elevations.
Snowpack: The snowpack at lower elevation was simply weak with little structure still intact, HS around 50-60cm. As we got higher in elevation the snow hight increased to about 75cm at 10,600ft. Here strong over weak Persistent Slab snowpack structure was becoming much more obvious as we probed through the snowpack. Just as quickly as the snowpack hight had increased, we had also increased our slope angle to around 35 degrees and observed the snowpack drop in hight to about 50-60cm and the PS structure disappeared. Just looking at the slope it was hard to see any difference, however getting up close and personal with the slope we could tell it had previously avalanched earlier this winter. We saw no obvious signs to instability, but also didn’t push our slope angles where we found the PS structure.