Date of Observation: 12/27/2022
Name: Zach Kinler and Evan Ross
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: West Brush Creek
Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: A couple of very small facet sluffs on steep, sheltered East aspects.
Weather: Cool and moist in the valley to start the day with clouds thickening. Nice and warm once we were out of the inversion, light southerly winds in open areas.
Snowpack: We traveled on east and southeast slopes from 9,800′-11,400′. The upper half of the snowpack in this zone is very weak. Southeast slopes had an HS of 50cm. Surfaces were a 3cm crust followed by 10cm of moist rounds. Below that was a thin crust with facets above and below. The bottom 30cm were moist grains to the ground. Moving into east, HS was 60cm, the surface crust was not present just 30cm of fist hard large-grain facets above a 4F faceting slab. 3-4 mm Surface Hoar was present from valley bottom to over 11,000ft on east aspects.
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- SE BTL. Very weak crust/facet combo a few inches below the surface. Surface hoar was present on the upper crust.
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- Surface hoar at 11,200′, east aspect
