Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 03/07/2018
Name: Ben Pritchett

Subject: Upper Cement Creek / Upper Taylor

Avalanches: Numerous old D2 and D2.5 avalanches on northwest, north, to southeast aspects. See a sampling in the video.

Weather: Warm and calm, high thin clouds developing in the afternoon.
Snowpack: Generally faceted and weak. Trenchy sledding. Minor collapsing near treeline at the margins of slabs comprised of old wind deposited snow. Valley bottoms severely impacted by sustained inversions, creating unsupportive, completely rotten snowpack. As soon as you climb above the inversions, the mid-pack gains some strength and the Persistent Slab structure is in place.
Mostly dry surfaces, except on steeper sunny terrain, where free water had not yet percolated below the March 4th interface.

Location: Paradise Divide Area
Date of Observation: 03/07/2018
Name: than

Subject: skiing
Aspect: North, North East
Elevation: BTL Weather: sunny, no wind
Snowpack: 18″ of facets in trees at start of hike that soon developed a small midpack as we got higher and then solid midpack by the time we were approaching the ridge. (wait, are we supposed to say midpack anymore?) 6-8″ ski pen on climb up and ski down. Cut across some convex rolls and steep pockets on way up and down with only a little sluffing.

Location: Paradise Divide Area
Date of Observation: 03/06/2018
Name: Ben Pritchett

Subject: West’s near Elkton

Avalanches:

Several recent avalanches observed from Sunday evening’s frontal passage and/or Monday’s winds

Weather: Cool, sunny, light winds
Snowpack: West aspects still holding Persistent Slab structure below treeline, thought the slab is strong and presently unreactive. Water on these structures will become a concern when the time comes.
CTH (SC) and ECTP 28 below the holiday slab.

Photos:

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 03/05/2018
Name: Eleven Snowcat Operation

Subject: Eleven Snowcat Operation
Aspect:
Elevation:

Weather: OVC throughout most of the day, clearing in the afternoon. Cold with high temps on the ridge of 3* today. Calm winds this morning increasing to moderate in the afternoon–gusting to 36. We did not observe the NW shift in winds this afternoon.
Snowpack: 6″ of new snow full refresh. Wind pressed snow up high from moderate SW winds overnight. We observed isolated cracking 1′ in front of the skis, Not reactive to ski cuts although we avoided suspect wind slab terrain today. Skied Far Out and ski cut a few wind drifts up to 16″ of snow with minimal cracking. Binge skied great with no signs of slab and swill, bender, candys looked not very loaded.

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 03/05/2018
Name: Evan Ross

Subject: Punchy Spots and Windy Spots
Aspect:
Elevation: 9,400-12,000

Weather: Got out late afternoon when it was mostly cloudy, before clearing sky near sunset. Partly cloudy sky for the first part of the day. Gusty winds in the valley bottoms and strong gusts at treeline in the afternoon. New snow swirling around in places and pluming off the high peaks in the Ruby Range.
Snowpack: Tiger stripes and lots of stripping. We’re talking about the new snow. It was striped, stripped and loaded. Got some time looking at the alpine in the Ruby Range above Irwin during the late afternoon. Southerly and northerly facing terrain had lots of stripping in general, with loading along gully features. Easterly and northeasterly facing slopes definitely looked that fattest in the alpine. Used a snowmobile to push on a number of wind loaded pockets up to 11,700ft on southerly and easterly facing slopes with no results. Some of those wind-loaded pockets were easily up to 12″ deep with new snow, but fairly small in the terrain. Finally got some cracking in the new snow at 12,000ft on a northerly facing wind-loaded pocket. Never the less, hit some good pockets and steep slopes with a 500 pound object with few signs to instability. The game continues…

Totally different story on below Axtell on it’s northerly side. Punchy faceted ugly structure, simulating the less snow favored areas around crested butte. Traveled between 9,400ft and 10,600ft in this area on northerly and westerly facing slopes. This is below treeline in elevation with lots of near treeline type of characteristics in the terrain. The snowpack in general was just an ugly version of Continental. Found the most concerning Persistent Slab snowpack structure for our who forecast area. But still, few signs to instability on some suspect terrain features.

Photos:

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 03/02/2018
Name: Randy Felix

Subject: Avi Pics from East Beckwith
Aspect:
Elevation:

Avalanches:
Weather: Clear, windy above tree line.
Snowpack:

Photos:

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 03/05/2018
Name: Ben Pritchett

Subject: Transitions
Aspect: North East, East, South East
Elevation: below treeline

Avalanches:
Weather: Cold front rolled in at 1pm as advertised. Bluebird to Blizzard.
Snowpack: Dug in the heat of the day (late morning) on a sunny southeast aspect and found the snow surface was actively generating free water that was percolating down about 3 inches. That wetting front will be frozen for a few days, but the spring transition is beginning. On those some southeasterly aspects, we observed a facet layer down about 8″ that will be our first layer of interest as we start to track wet snow concerns in the coming week. Compression tests popped cleanly on these facets, and if wetted, would be a perfect weak layer for shallow wet slabs. In higher elevation terrain or wind drifted terrain with more load on these southeast aspects, we’ll need to watch these buried facets layers as water percolates down to them. The set up for wet slabs this spring is looking ripe.
As we transitioned to easterly aspects, the free water had only formed thin surface crusts, no percolation below the snow surface.
Just a few degrees north of east, the snow surfaces were smooth and creamy with no sun crusts, still providing great turns.
As the sun returns after this cold front, it’ll be time to start hunting the aspects.  Profiles on the shady side of east produced sudden collapse results on our pre-February facet layer (our Persistent Slab concern) and near the ground on depth hoar (our Deep Persistent Slab problem).  The structure is still lurking, we’re just lacking the big loading event so the below treeline problems are in hibernation.

Photos:

Rills (technically not runnels) forming on the snow surface showing free water draining down into the snowpack. The first sign of our oncoming spring transition.