Location: Paradise Divide Area
Date of Observation: 03/09/2020
Name: Zack Kinler & Evan Ross
Subject: Small Avalanches And Great Snow
Aspect: North, North East, South, South West
Elevation: 9,000-12,000

Avalanches: A couple fresh Loose Wet avalanches that were small in size on southerly facing terrain at 10,000ft. Skier triggered several small and thin Wind Slabs at upper elevation northerly facing slopes near ridge lines.

Weather: Light winds, mostly cloudy, with some nice windows of sun to improve visibility and heat the snow surface on sunny slopes.

Snowpack: Northerly terrain offered up excellent riding conditions with only some small avalanche problems on wind-loaded terrain. Recent storm totals were 5″ at 10,500ft. In general that new snow was bonding well with old snow surfaces and no avalanche concerns were found at mid and lower elevations. Nearing ridgeline in the 11,500-12,000ft range, grapple and storm instabilities were found in the recent snow. Interestingly, some skier triggered crowns propagated fairly wide and were only 2″ thick. Right near ridgeline were there was just a little extra wind-loading some crowns neared 6″. All and all this avalanche problem was small and easy to manage. In 40+ degree terrain near ridgeline, triggering was easy and would clean out the hazard. On upper 30-degree slopes near ridgeline, these slabs were slow-moving and easy to ski through our out of if triggered. This avalanche problem could grow slightly in size with the little forecasted snow, but at the same time, I’d expect that same interface to become more stubborn to trigger.

In the late afternoon, low elevation southerly slopes were again wet and punchy. If you encountered that same snowpack on steep terrain, a small loose snow avalanche could gouge deeper into the snowpack and accumulate mass.

Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 03/09/2020
Name: Cosmo
Subject: Cement
Elevation: 9300-12000

Weather: Partly cloudy and pretty warm. Storm totals ranged from <1” down low to 2.5 or 3 inches up higher.

Snowpack: Variable. All aspects had some kind of crust, though north facing slopes up high the crust was pretty minimal. Had one collapse with shooting cracks late in the afternoon on low angle SE facing terrain at 10000’. Failed on crust about 20 cm down from snow surface. Cracks ran about 40 yards across the slope along a convexity and about 25 or 30 yards down slope. Snow surface and collapsed later were very wet. Below 10k’ snowpack is pretty rotten.

Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 03/07/2020
Name: Evan Ross & Zach Kinler
Subject: A wet mess, to a sea of crusts, to pow, and a Mosquito
Aspect: North East, East
Elevation: 9,000-11,500
Avalanches: A few small wet loose avalanches from yesterday on steep south facing slopes.
Weather: Partly cloudy with intense sun at times and a cooler feel with clouds other times. Calm winds throughout the day, until gaining ridgeline in the afternoon with a light southwesterly breeze.
Snowpack: Low elevations were a wet mess and generally unsupportive to boot. We got out of that by climbing up some below treeline ENE facing slopes where a colder and deeper snowpack provided a bit more support but still not supportive to boots in many spots. The upper 8cm’s was wet. By the time we moved into more easterly facing terrain at 11,000ft the snow surface was already crusting back over. Here, moist snow was found all the way to the ground, and water had recently moved through the upper snowpack and was pooling around the 2/3 crust down ~50cm. Once that upper snowpack refreezes there will be no more concern for Persistent Slabs breaking deeply into the snowpack until the upper snowpack either melts back down or we see a very large loading event. We finished on NE facing terrain, on those slopes anything with a slight easterly tilt or the low angles had a thin crust on the snow surface.

Wet Avalanche issues were the main concern we encountered.

East, 11,100′ Brush Creek area

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 03/06/2020
Subject: Small Wet Slab
Aspect: East
Elevation: 10,600ft
Avalanches:

A small Wet Slab Avalanche on an east aspect below treeline.

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 03/06/2020
Subject: 2nd Bowl Snodgrass
Aspect: East
Elevation: ~10000

Avalanches: Small shallow slide observed on the ridgeline to the skiers left of 2nd Bowl entrance. I took an alternate route down and did not get a great visual but appeared to be natural, R1D1 and very close to the location of the much larger 2-18 Snodgrass slide.

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 03/05/2020
Name: Joey Carpenter
Subject: Cornice Triggered Avalanche Mt Owen
Aspect: North, North East, South
Elevation: 11.4-12.8

Avalanches: Large cornice fall (estimated) late yesterday triggered widely propagating slab in recent storm snow. R2D2.5 The spx in the E facing gut off Owen was basically destroyed from the massive blocks running through. First photo from toe of debris pile shows the multiple smaller storm slabs that released as a result of the massive impact from the cornice failure. Second photo from the bench below Scarps Ridge shows the lower storm slab released by the huge chunks bouncing (bounce impressions indicated in green) past the end of the debris pile, over the next roll and onto the bench (blocks indicated in orange). The last photo, with sled for reference, shows how large these pieces were (these are the blocks indicated in orange in previous photo). The three remaining chunks that hadn’t been destroyed over their 1500 vertical foot journey downhill were still about the size of small sedans.

Weather: Single digits to start the day at the TH but rapid warming. By the time we were on our second ascent of the morning, it was skinning/booting in tshirt weather. Snow near rock out croppings was beginning to let go although we didn’t observe any rollers from snow surface warming.

Snowpack: Southern ascent held a firm base, with boot top penetration through a ~5cm breakable crust. N & NE snow surfaces have settled to 7-9 inches of snow and feel much more “wintery” than solar exposures. Overall supportive spx with no underfoot signs to instability. The cornice fall did indicate there are still some surface slabs that could potentially release but may require intense impact to do so.

Photos: