Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 12/28/2019
Name: Ian Havlick
Subject: West Brush/Deer Creek
Aspect: East, South East, South, South West, West
Elevation: 8600-11,600
Avalanches: No fresh avalanches aside from fairly widespread, generally harmless dry loose sluffing on E-SE facing terrain steeper than 40º. Still noticable were large persistent slab avalanches that failed on NE-E facing terrain from our Dec 14-15th avalanche cycle. These slides have re-loaded with 12-18″ new snow since that last major avalanche cycle.
Weather: Generally unsettled, mostly cloudy with peeks of filtered sunshine. No radiational effect on snow surface, but likely did aid in settlement. Light NW breeze kept it chilly and lightly moving new snow. 6-10″ storm snow accumulations in this drier portion of the range.
Snowpack: Height of snow ranged from 60-110cm with elevation. Boot pen to the ground, with ski pen generally 10-20cm but in shallower or bushy areas easily punched to ground with skis. Still quite weak structure in this portion of forecast area traveled, mostly facets but some 4F hardness in the midpack remains. On steeper southerly facing terrain, a stack of crusts and facets are widespread- no slab yet, but could become quite problematic with large storm or steady incremental loading.
**Did have shooting 30′ repeatable shooting cracks while traversing a 35º east facing slope** . Suspect this was 12/24 MF crust collapsing?
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