Avalanches: See photos. A number of shallow loose snow avalanches (both dry and wet), skier and natural triggered on southerly aspects, initiated by solar warming. D1 in size, involving just the recent storm snow. One D2 slab avalanche on NE aspect above treeline of Mt. Axtell, probably ran towards the end of the last storm.
Weather: Clear, calm, mild temps.
Snowpack: On NE aspects BTL, we found a drying, refreezing, stabilizing snowpack. See photo.
At 9,000 ft. Water front had advanced 30 cm and had percolated to, pooled, and now refrozen on an interface 55 cm deep (1/19 interface?). The upper 20 cm is now refrozen clusters or dry storm snow, leaving about 10 cm of very wet grains insulated 20-30 cm deep and capped by a refreeze that won’t break down on this shadier aspect.
At 9,600 ft, there were no wet grains remaining in the snowpack; a series of soft melt-freeze crusts in the upper snowpack.
The biggest concern at both of these locations is the thin layer of low density stellar dendrites above the soft melt-freeze crusts at the surface. This layer will quickly facet into our next weak layer over the next few days on shadier aspects where it doesn’t get cooked.

D2.  NE aspect ATL of Mt. Axtell

Skier triggered D1 wet loose, S/SE near treeline.

Loose snow avalanches off of Mt. Belleview.  S aspect ATL

Avalanches:
Weather: Sky: obscured in morning, overcast through the midday and obscured again in the afternoon.
Precip: S-1 to S1 in the morning, no precep in during the midday and S1 again in the afternoon.
Temp: 9,500ft 10:30am Tair 3c Sur 0, T20 -1, 2:30pm Tair 1c, Tsur -.5 T20 -.5
Snowpack: See form

snod

Avalanches: Big roller balls on a few steep ENE slopes. Think these mostly fell out of trees rolling to larger size as the moved down the hill. These didn’t entrain any more snow. New snow to thick?

Debris piles below the east face of Gothic. Couldn’t see any slabs or crowns on the face, though light could have been better.
Weather: Sun poking through the clouds in the early morning, then overcast sky for the rest of the day. S1 snowfall began at about 4pm. Calm winds
Snowpack: Very little signs to instability, traveling across several steep slopes to 40 degrees. Snowpack was pasted in above 10,500ft with an inch or two of fluff form last night. Minimal sluffing in 40 degrees terrain. Above this elevation the 2/10 interface was down 25cm and dry with some graupel in the mix. No CT results on this layer or results while skiing. In the same area on a 35 degree slope, 1/19 SH was down 90cm. CT27 SP on the SH. SH is still 2-3mm tall but looks to be filled with rounded grains between the feathers.

Below 10,500ft the snowpack became very thick. Very northwest feeling shmooo. Bet it was still 0c through the new snow as observed in previous days down below the 1/10 interface that is moist, going on borderline wet for about 5cm. Hand pits produced more non-planner breaks. Ski tests showed no signs to instability.

Viewd a number of glide cracks across the valley at low elevations and on small terrain. This one stuck out a litle more. East aspect 9,500ft.

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Moist borderline wet 1/10 interface at 10,000ft on ENE aspect.

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Dry 1/10 interface on NE aspect at 10,500ft. 1/19 SH down 90cm.

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Avalanches: On south slope around 35 degrees, triggered a shallow wet slough, that traveled about 150 feet. Must have been slow moving as observed it on second lap. Slope position was an inflection point between concave and convex.
Weather: Obscured skies and mostly calm transitioning to S-1 with calm winds and slowly dropping temperatures.
Snowpack: 4 inches of new dense snow in the last 24 hours.

Avalanches: Approximately a dozen natural avalanches (L-N-D1-2) ran on the east side of Gothic within a half hour period as the skies cleared slightly around 1pm. With limited visibility and debris running over cliffs, it is hard to say for sure that that these were loose rather than storm slab avalanches. However, they seemed dry, came out of very steep terrain and didn’t trigger any additional slabs on the aprons below the cliffs.

Also saw a SS-N-R2D1.5 in a cross-loaded shallow gully near treeline that looked a day old
Weather: Temps slightly below freezing all day, snowing lightly (S-1) with a few periods of S1, mostly overcast skies with a few short periods of high thin clouds and strong solar radiation, light winds from the south, no blowing snow observed
Snowpack: 25cm of moist storm snow is settling into a slightly stiffer slab than yesterday over a 5cm thick layer of moist 3mm clustered melt forms, but test slopes and compression tests produced no results on a SW aspect near 10,000′ near Avery. A similar storm slab was much more reactive to hand shears on an east aspect ~9,500′ near the trailhead where it was on a wetter weak layer of similar grains.

Gothic

Avalanches: Several full depth (~12″ deep) wet loose avalanches came onto the shoulder of Hwy 135, D1 to D1.5, near and north of Almont. Not sure when these ran, but they looked fresh.
Weather: Temperature was above freezing at 10 p.m. Foggy, no current precip.
Snowpack:

Avalanches: Heard one large natural avalanche rumbling down the East a Face of Gothic around 2pm, but poor visibility all day limited observations. No other cracking or collapsing on short and very soggy tour.
Weather: Intense snowfall over last 24 hours with periods of 1″/ hour (S3), Air temp 3 deg C at 1300, consistently obscured skies and light to moderate northerly winds without significant snow transport in the valley bottom.
Snowpack: 1pm on flat terrain @ 9,600′ w/ HS 230cm and PF 50cm: 25cm of moist storm snow tops 20cm of wet snow over a thin, moist crust and an otherwise nearly homogenous and mostly dry snowpack. Compression tests produced hard PC results down 25cm on 3mm clustered melt forms and down 45cm on a thin layer of .5mm moist facets under the crust. Percolating water is not pooling on the crust here. Found Jan 19th surface hoar layer down 85cm, but CTN on this layer and ECTX 150cm deep. 30cm thick wet slabs failed easily under skies but showed minimal propagation on 35-40 degree small, well-supported test slopes.

Avalanches: No instabilities.
Weather: Mostly S1 precipitation with moderate and light winds. Winds didn’t transport ground snow.
Snowpack: Less than 2 inches/24 hours including today’s tour.
Hand pits on SW aspects:
1-2 inches of new snow on 2 inch wind slab. Below windslab, 3-5 inches of F hardness wet crystals on top of 2 inch 1F crust. Below were another 2 -4 inches of 4F snow.

Evidence and magnitude of this weeks winds? 2 to 6 inch snow globules littering some of the open slopes. Source: snow from aspens and spruce.