Date of Observation: 01/12/2022

Zone: Northwest Mountains & Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Climbed to the top of Coon Basin from town. Descended into Red Lady Basin via upper Red Coon Glades. Caught the Red Lady lap track and climbed the standard route to Gunsight Pass. Descended Redwell Basin to OBJ. Skated back to town on the nordic trails (nordic pass displayed, of course). 9,000-12,200; mostly N, NE, S & SE aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Lots of old crowns, but nothing new. A few small point releases in rocky terrain on solar aspects.

Weather: Beautiful Day! Very slight and intermittent NW breeze. Sunny and quite pleasant.

Snowpack: S & SE aspects held a firm, supportable crust with spring-like corn skiing. Watching a few folks dropping in, it looked like the snow in RLB was still soft. Snow on shaded N aspects was dense, smooth & soft. Very little wind-effect in Redwell except at the very top. Nordic trails were exquisitely groomed!

Date of Observation: 01/11/2022
Name: Harrison Bosler, Math Alagna and Zach Kinler

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Drove to Crested Butte Community School, walked to hillside west of school.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Blue skies, strong solar, cold temps remained in the valley floor
Snowpack: HS was 90 to 110 cm on NE aspects in town. Very supportive snowpack with 15 cm boot pen. The 12/6 interface is quite thin making up the bottom few centimeters of the snowpack and is sintering and gaining strength. The snow is strong immediately above and below the 12/23 Melt-freeze crust and does not appear to be an issue here. The 1/6 Graupel layer produced easy CT results and Non-Propagating ECT results as there is little slab on top of it in this shallower snowpack, will keep an eye on this one as slabs grow above. 4 mm surface hoar has formed on the surface and will likely continue to grow especially at these valley bottom locations.

Date of Observation: 01/11/2022
Name: Josh Jones

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Mt. Axtell Half Bowl

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: 8 Degrees
4.0 MPH NNW wind
0/8 Skycover
Snowpack: Deep and consistent snow observed on northwest to northeast aspects on Mt. Axtell’s Half Bowl. At about 10500′ and below we observed surface hoar, with large grains in spots. Great skiing conditions.

Date of Observation: 01/09/2022
Name: Andrew Butterfield

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: SE end of the NW zone. Started at 9400′ and climbed to 11500′ on S, SW and SE aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A couple small loose wet tumblers below a few rock and cliff bands. Looked to be just the recent snow shedding off with solar warming. Nothing else to note.
Weather: Pleasant and sunny. No wind until I hit the ridge and wind on the ridge was light (5-10ish mph tops).
Snowpack: HS was hovering around 110 cm leaving the sled and tapered up to 140+ cm closer to the ridge. I didn’t pull my probe out to find exact snow depths near the top of the ridge. New snow depth varied from around 10 cm down low to 15+ cm up higher. Trail breaking was incredibly easy all the way up, supportive to skis and boot. Looked to be small drifts on more easterly aspects, in the usual cross-loaded terrain, and ski pen was marginally deeper on aspects that had an E tinge, but nothing substantial. The sun/ warm temps have already worked on the snowpack on the sunnies and continued to do so today. No signs of instability on anywhere I traveled in my tour. Looking across the valley, true westerly aspects ATL were pretty stripped and the cross-loaded gullies held the majority of snow on W facing terrain.

Date of Observation: 01/09/2022
Name: Andrew Breibart

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass trailhead to weather station to East River road

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Two avalanches on E and SE aspects
Weather: cold in the shade and hot in the sun. clear. calm.
Snowpack: New snow was about 6 inches. At the drop in, HS ranged between 135 and 170 cm with facets at the bottom. A few slow moving sloughs in storm snow while skiing the lower 1/3 of the run in the trees.

Date of Observation: 01/08/2022
Name: Benjamin Schmatz

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: N/A

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather:
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/08/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Kebler TH to the gravel pit. Climbed to the upper meadows on Red Lady glades (9,400-11,100 feet; SSE aspect).

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Upper 20’s and snowing. Steady SSW breeze, maybe 10mph. Snow vacillated between big, fluffy flakes and rimed snow.
Snowpack: Stout, supportable crust under 8-10 cm of new snow. A little better than “dust on crust,” but definitely didn’t need my 116mm skis.

Date of Observation: 01/07/2022
Name: Frank Stern

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Washington Gulch, 10,000′ to 11,000′

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: No recent avalanches.
Weather: Sunny
Snowpack: Wind effected everywhere except dense trees. No collapsing or other movement.

Date of Observation: 01/02/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Rustler’s Gulch area (Mt. Bellview, etc)

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Filling in the database with a few more from the 12/31 cycle.

Date of Observation: 01/05/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Primarily Elkton and Baldy Area

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: Bit breezy eh. Obscured sky and strong westerly wind. Mostly S-1 and light snowfall. Heavier rimed precip was accumulating as I headed out in the early afternoon.
Snowpack: Hard to measure new snow given all the wind. In a fairly sheltered area at 11,000ft, there was about 6″ new at 1pm. The new snow was very light and mostly getting blown away. I was able to find a couple of small test slopes where the new snow would produce some shooting cracks and holding up as a fresh wind slab. Otherwise, the snow has already been redistributed from the winds with old hard drifts having previously formed. More forecasted snow will provide more fuel for new wind slab development. It was real blustery out there at near and above treeline elevations and managing wind drifted snow was still one of the main concerns.