Date of Observation: 12/12/2021
Name: Travis Colbert

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Up the standard skin track with a slight diversion at the ridge to evaluate untraveled snow for instabilities (see photo). Plenty of collapsing and cracking. I would still be very wary of avalanche terrain that has yet to avalanche. Steady SW wind adding a load to leeward fetches. Descended the northern edge of Friday’s remotely triggered D2, with a good collapse on a stomp turn just off the ridge. Soft, but slightly punchy, wind-affected snow for most of the run. Lots of shattering on isolated terrain features down low. 2mm surface hoar on shaded slopes.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Nothing that hasn’t been reported.

Date of Observation: 12/12/2021
Name: Lawson Yow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Rode out slate to the bottom of the switchbacks

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Several EF ridgetop avalanches on skoog.
A big avy up on purple ridge (above purple palace)
A small, recent avy on a BTL NF shoulder of purple.
Weather: Cold n Clear. No wind
Snowpack: Storm snow starting to get heavier

Date of Observation: 12/12/2021
Name: Zach Kinler

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Anthracites, standard up-track to the ridge

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: The slide lookers left in 7 bowls is quite impressive, propagating very widely on a slope that typically gets more scouring than loading. Debris was deep across the typical egress from 7 and blasted into the trees hitting the standard uptrack as well. Very active in the Playground area with most activity on these N and NE aspects breaking early in the cycle. Bed surfaces have largely filled back in and debris buffed smooth.
Weather: Perfect winter day, cold temps but abundant sunshine and little wind near and below treeline.
Snowpack: HS in Anthracites around 150 cm, we got a couple of collapses but overall somewhat quiet breaking trail on shady aspects below treeline. Many slopes 35 or greater have avalanched or shattered. On a SE aspect at 11,200, there was no old snow found with around 70 cm of settled storm snow on dirt. The surface was slightly moist while S aspects had a moist upper couple inches of snow. Small surface hoar and near-surface facets were noted in the shade.
Photos:

Date of Observation: 12/11/2021
Name: Harry V. L.

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Slate. Not very far. As it turns out, old sleds are not as good as new ones. To have enough money to buy a good snowmobile would be nice… Anyway, we went up Gunsight on a walkaround.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: We assumed that many of the recent activity in the alpine was drifted in and/ or filled back in with the last spurts of snow yesterday afternoon. However, we were confident there were many which had filled in and weren’t visible… On our little walk up Gunsight we were able to easily produce reactive results on anything and everything. Pretty much everything that was remotely steep enough to slide had already gone to ground, or at least fractured to ground. Luckily we found one switchback that was primed to go and it barely took the weight of a ski to send it to ground (see picture). Skied a few meadows on the descent and it was a symphony of whoomphs.
Weather: Cold. Car said -9 at around 9am. Upon return, car read 4 at 2pm. We observed flagging off everything above treeline all day. Obviously windy in the alpine, seeminly due west. No wind BTL on N.
Snowpack: Well, a lot of adjectives. We were walking on shady N facing aspects primarily… So, unsupportive, unconsolidated, noisy, reactive, etc. Ski pen was close to ground and boot pen was basically to ground… No surprises there.

Date of Observation: 12/11/2021
Name: jeff banks

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: 9600-10,800

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather:
Snowpack: Dug on SSW-W-N aspects 9600-10,800

SSW-SW: Storm snow well bonded to the ground & itself, unreactive (HS 60cm, Fist to 4F, block sticks to leaves & grass when pried off)

W: Storm snow well bonded to thin crust on the ground, unreactive.

Shaded by Evergreens: Also well bonded to melt freeze crust. Occasionally, small, isolated pockets of facets and the storm slab was poorly bonded but small ski length cracks underfoot.

N: Wind loaded, shooting cracks traveling ~20 ft

Date of Observation: 12/12/2021
Name: Travis Colbert

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Went for peaceful ski on a flat forested trail where the only sounds were the frequent rolling collapses that would shake the snow from a tree 40 feet away and the gentle buzzing of faraway two-strokes at the Kebler trailhead. The high point of my tour was a portal to a much different world. Most of the terrain above Green Lake had slid, taking out much of the season’s snowpack. Tread carefully out there!

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Photos:

Date of Observation: 12/11/2021

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Toured a south/southwest face in the northwest mountains. Snow was wind effected at all elevations. Ski pen was about boot top on the ski up. No signs of instability on our ski but we did not venture into any shady or north aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Widespread avalanches, mostly on north and east aspects. Most interesting was a fairly large avalanche at the top of the Pittsburg Rollers. Purple ridge had avalanches everywhere.
Weather: sunny, windy. moderate winds BTL higher winds ATL
Snowpack: Wind effected at all elevations

Date of Observation: 12/11/2021
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Anthracite Range and East Beckwith

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A handful of D1 to D2 slabs, various aspects. See photos

Date of Observation: 12/10/2021
Name: David Bumgarner

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: We thought by leaving later that someone would put in the skin track but ended up getting a great workout putting it in ourselves!
We went up the usual skin track in the forest and saw a large amount of instability (huge shooting cracks and lots of collapses).

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: We got out to the ridge and skied close to the trees between convex corner and 1st bowl. We had lots of cracks near the top (Photo) and remotely triggered a D2 slide in 1st bowl (photo).
Weather: Overcast throughout our tour. periods of light snow (S1).
Snowpack: Sketchy! New snow needs to settle just to feel less punchy.

Date of Observation: 12/10/2021
Name: Alex Banas

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Standard Uptrack for Coneys. Descended the first treed ridge in Coneys propper.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: SS-ASc-D1-I
SS-ASy-D2-I
Weather: OVC skies, moderate down valley westerly winds, cold. H2D 5cm HST 70-100cm elevation dependent.
Snowpack: Widespread cracking and collapsing up to 20m infront of skis. 15-30cm of large-grained facets sitting below 70-100cm HST, Increasing with elevation. In the basal facets there looks to be a deteriorating 1cm MFcr that is faceting out. No mid-storm instabilities observed.