Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 03/02/2020
Subject: Storm Slabs on Snodgrass
Aspect: North, North East, East, South East
Elevation: 10,000

Avalanches:  Easy to skier trigger storm slabs on E facing terrain over 35 degrees. On N/NE it was running more like a slough. A few storm slabs ran naturally on SE aspects

Weather: Warm temps whenever the sun came out, Occasional snow showers

Snowpack: 11″ New snow overnight. Storm snow was cold and dry in the shade, but starting to get pretty dense and slab up wherever the sun touched it

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 03/02/2020
Name: CT
Subject: CGibson Ridge avalanche
Aspect: North East, East
Elevation: 9200

Avalanches: Observed natural avalanche on the S end of Gibson Ridge this morning.

Photos:

Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/29/2020
Name:
Subject: The day that disappeared – Pearl Star
Aspect: North, North East, South East, South, West
Elevation: 11,000′-12,700′

Avalanches: Old Cornice Break stepping down into wind slab and old snow. ATL – North East

Weather: Blue Jay. Warming temps in the days and nights. Rounding trend on its approach.

Snowpack: Wind has had its way with the Friend Hut zone.

HS150-170cm observed near friends hut and similar elevations in neighboring basins. Fully faceted snow in shallow north-facing areas found but spotty. Old wind slab on isolated terrain features above this fully faceted pack seemed to be alive and possibly reactive if found.

HS 240-300 on Lee loaded slopes ATL in South basin of Pearl and Star. 40cm+ of DH below very firm snow. Old wind deposited snow found on specific features and seemed to be stubborn to unreactive. Bonded well to snow below. One significant sign of instability, whumpf (no cracking observed), on a tour up to pearl pass. This was on a neighboring slope east of the pass on a South facing aspect.

Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/29/2020
Name: Dan K
Subject: Cement Creek
Aspect: North East, East, South East
Elevation: 11k

Avalanches: None

Weather: Pleasantly warm down low. E-S slopes BTL were corned up nicely at 10am.

Snowpack: Found two shooting cracks ~15m long on E/NE sheltered slope NTL at 11k’. No collapsing or whoomphing was noted by our party and we thought it likely that they occurred naturally a day or two prior. Our tour was quiet and we noticed no signs of instability other than these two cracks.

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 02/28/2020
Name: Ben Pritchett
Subject: Kebler Pass Obs
Aspect: South East, South, South West
Elevation: BTL

Avalanches: Very minor natural Loose Wet activity. Not a shed cycle.

Weather:

Ridgeline Wind Speed: 5-10 mph
Ridgeline Wind Direction: NW
Wind Loading: None
Temperature: 37 F
Sky Cover: Few
Depth of Total Snow: 200 cm
Weather Description: Cooker afternoon with high thin clouds trapping radiation.

Snowpack: Some shiny-looking areas of saturated snow. Surfaces wetted down to first crust in the upper snowpack on south and southwest facing slopes. It became easy to pull about 2″ of wet snow on the crust, which corresponded to the few shallow Loose Wet avalanches observed. Sunnyside of east and due west became crusted, but could not pull loose wet with hand tests on steep slopes.

Photos:

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/28/2020
Name: MR and SL
Subject: Spoon sluff
Aspect: South
Elevation: 11,400

Avalanches: Skier triggered wet loose avalanche, triggered just above the mostly filled in steep roll in the spoon, broke predictably and ran slowly so was easy to avoid, but wouldn’t have been fun to be in. Ran 150 feet and 30 feet wide, stopping just before some older debris. Was skiing around noon, a little later than we intended.