Date of Observation: 12/31/2022
Name: Benny Walter

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Text message ob sent in from Elkton

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: East facing at 10,600 probably 40 degree slope remotely triggered from the tracks 200 feet to the lookers right. 50cmish at the crown 100 ft wide.

Date of Observation: 12/31/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Rec tour on Mt Emmons, mostly on SE aspects BTL

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A pair of fresh large natural avalanches in Racoon Basin. There were small trees in the debris, and I’m guessing they broke on the mid December later based on crown size. One smaller slab that broke in the new snow on a drifted feature.
Weather: Moderate snowfall rates all morning with a few heavy pulses. Light to moderate snow transport at ridgetop
Snowpack: Top heavy 8” of storm snow produced clean shears. Moderate propagating test results below the mid December facet crust layer, about 70 cm deep. Got a few muffled collapses on that layer but still relatively quiet where we were (on low angle terrain).  Slab is consolidating and getting noticeably denser compared to similar slopes yesterday.

Date of Observation: 12/30/2022
Name: Sophia Todorov

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: RMBL Snow Study Plot in parking lot in front of Dining Hall

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: Light snow, overcast, calm, about 15 degrees F

Snowpack: Easy to delineate 3 distinct layers in the snowpack. Top half (34cm) is fresh precipitation from current storm cycle. Middle layer is faceted and very weak (19cm thickness). However, we did not observe any collapse or propagation during an extended column test. ECTX. no result from an extended column test.

Date of Observation: 12/30/2022
Name: Mark Robbins

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: AMR

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Small skier triggered storm slab at the convexity lower skiers right big chute where it often slides

Snowpack: Surprisingly quiet except for the storm slab release previously mentioned. Other ski cuts and stomping around on little wind lips yielded no results

Date of Observation: 12/28/2022
Name: Jack Caprio

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass. Northeast side

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: We skier triggered plenty of loose dry avalanches in the new snow. Some of the loose dry avalanches entrained into old snow.

We intentionally skier triggered 3 soft slab avalanches failing deeper into the snowpack. In both 1st and 2nd bowl, we triggered soft slab avalanches breaking below the new/ old snow interface.

The loose dry avalanches failed on the 12/27 interface, where as the slab avalanches broke 6-8” below the 12/27 interface (see photos).

We remotely triggered a soft slab avalanche off the gothic road-cut on our way out (<D1)
Weather: S-1 snowfall all day. Warm temps. Overcast skies.
Snowpack: 6-9” of new, high density snow. On northeast aspects below treeline, the new snow fell on top of very weak snow surfaces.

Date of Observation: 12/28/2022

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Red Coon glades

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: No signs of instability were observed.
Weather: Warm. Estimated air temp was 40F
Light snow most of the day. S-1
No wind
Snowpack: Storm snow was 7”. HS was a meter
The surface conditions were stellar s with no wind effect. No wind texture at all.
The old snow new interface had an old sun crust but the new seemed to bond well

Date of Observation: 12/28/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Morning tour in the East River area near Gothic road, around 9500’ on easterly aspects

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: I ski triggered and saw a handful of natural loose dry avalanches this morning that entrained old snow, D1 in size. Later in the morning, I skier triggered a few soft slab avalanches with minor propagation, that failed on the 12/20 facet layer, about 10” deep.
Weather: Snowfall rates tapered to very light by mid morning. Calm winds.
Snowpack: About 7” to 9” of new snow, started out incohesive and sluffy and settled to slabbier as the day warmed up. By late morning, I started getting shooting cracks up to 20’ and triggered a few small soft slabs on test slopes, breaking on our most recent facet layer. More notable, I got several rumbling collapses in flatter terrain that failed on the depth hoar at the ground, about 3 feet deep. All of the steep pitches that I approached had either shed that more dangerous structure previously, or winds eroded it last week.

Date of Observation: 12/27/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: PM Snodgrass tour, poking into 1st Bowl, 2nd Bowl, and 3rd Bowl

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Skier triggered several small facet sluffs that entrained weak snow to the ground. These were in start zones that ran earlier this month.
Weather: Light snowfall started around 3:30 pm.
Snowpack: The snow surface was widespread small grained near surface facets on all aspects. Near the trailhead I found surface hoar up to 4-5mm, but I did not see it anywhere else along my tour, including the main start zones near ridgetop. All three of the start zones that I looked at had avalanched previously and held a very shallow snowpack with very weak facets (2mm) that sluffed easily. The snowpack elsewhere is faceted throughout, weak layer size and strength correlated to snow depth, ranging from 1-2mm. Southerlies held one or two collapsible crusts up to a few cm thick with facets above and below. Wind exposed terrain had a mix of wind crusts and thin hard wind slab over these layers.

Date of Observation: 12/27/2022
Name: Tom Schaefer

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Snow safety mitigation Irwin tenure E aspect 11’600′ 37 deg slope angle.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: #1 HS-AB-R2-D2-O. 40 cm’s X 55m X 60m
#2 HS-ASu-R2-D2-O. 40 cm’s X 40m X 60m
Both failed on a thin layer of 1mm FC above a thin MFC 30 cm’s above the ground.
Avalanche #2 was triggered unintentionally from the flank mid slope as we tiptoed onto it after a cover shot was placed higher on the slab.

Weather: OVC, 32 deg. SW 20-30 mph.

Snowpack: HS 30-80 cm’s variable snow pack ranging from wind stiffened to pockets of weak facets and sun crusts.

Date of Observation: 12/23/2022
Name: Harry Von Longshank

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Toured from 9200′ to around 11,400′ in the SW end of the SE forecast zone. Traveled on mainly easterly aspects all day.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Well, as this particular area is relatively shallow, most of the observed avalanches occurred on leeward features on E/SE aspects which were loaded during the recent wind event (surprise, surprise). A couple crowns were still fairly sharp and easily visible from a distance, which leads me to believe most of them ran towards the end of the wind-loading. Most appeared to have only been the wind slabs failing somewhere mid-snowpack but I did observe one on a very sparce and rocky N aspect ATL which failed to ground and seemed to have carried virtually all the available snow about 800′ down into the basin.
Weather: Pleasant. Light winds at best and mostly sunny. Temps probably somewhere in the high teens and low 20s.
Snowpack: 40cm down low, ramping up to around 100cm at higher elevations in protected areas. Wind stiffened and slightly textured in the open. Ski pen was roughly boot top all the way up. It was talkative in open meadows and clearings in the trees. I was able to get some surprisingly loud rumbling collapses traveling through most low angle, open terrain.