Date of Observation: 01/18/2023
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains

Weather: Only scattered light snow yesterday and last night with 3½” new and water 0.29″. Cloudy with light wind that gusted at times but little snow transport, then cooling overnight down to 8F and currently 12 after a high of 29 for only a brief time. Currently cloudy with a light wind though occasional gusts to 10, but it is not snowing. Snowpack dropped from 71″ to 67½” as the new snow is setting up, but with a ways to go.

Date of Observation: 01/17/2023
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass. 9,500-11,100ft. NE-E

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Skier triggered and natural loose snow avalanches or sluffs in steep terrain. All small in size, and interestingly not accumulating much mass even on 40-degree slopes. Numerous storm slabs that had released at various times throughout the last couple of storms. Some to D1.5 in size. The most recent activity from last night maybe was all small D1.

I talked with another skier that dropped into a portion of California Bowl. This is a steep NE slope around 10,600ft. While skiing in an old bed surface they said they triggered a soft slab avalanche about 1.5ft deep. They said the resulting avalanche was small in size and they didn’t notice it had released until finishing the line.

Weather: Between 11am and 1:30pm the snowfall was generally light. There was a break in snowfall from around 1:30pm to 3pm. Snowfall rates seemed higher in the morning and later afternoon when I wasn’t out. Calm wind.

Snowpack: A few storm interfaces could be found in the upper 45-50cm of the snowpack with shovel tilt tests and some small column tests. Nothing would propagate in an ECT. Skied steep slopes in the upper 30-degree range to around 40-degree range with only small sluffs. Some of those slopes had previously avalanched and had a couple of feet of snow back in those bed surfaces, and others had the full seasons snowpack. Of course, no obvious signs of instability regarding the PSa problem while traveling through that terrain.

I didn’t find any SH at the ~1/14 interface higher in the terrain. I was able to find that SH down low near Gothic Road on a NE aspect at 10,500ft. That SH was small, surrounded by soft fist-hard snow, and produced an ECTN result.

I only made observations in the upper snowpack. In general, the upper snowpack looked good thanks to the relatively warm temperatures and fairly continuous snow. I suspect the storm slab avalanche problem has primarily been reactive during brief windows of peak precipitation rates.

Date of Observation: 01/17/2023
Name: Billy Barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite observations.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Only light snow Monday, 2″, with a mid day pause, though solid clouds. Then steady moderately heavy snowfall all night with 11″ new but still a very light density 0.65″ so the 24 hour total is 13″ new with 0.77″ of water. Snowpack is at winter’s deepest of 71″. Wind is calm to light from the SW, no visibility and the temperature does not move, holding at 18F since midnight. Currently snowing very lightly. This recent snow is light on top of dense snow but there has been too much of it to stabilize quickly so at the least surface slides are likely. I wish one of them was my roof. billy
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/16/2023
Name: Zach Kinler

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Kebler TH to Anthracites, standard skin track to ridge

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: Did not observe any fresh slides in the terrain we traveled, views of the surrounding terrain were very limited.
Weather: Cloudy, calm winds near and below the treeline, light snow showers throughout the day, and moderate snow beginning to fall around 4:00pm. 1-2″ of accumulation during the day.
Snowpack: There was 35-40cm of settled storm snow over the past 2 days. HS was 235cm at 10,600′ on a north aspect. No cracking or collapsing observed during the tour. We skied slopes up to ~35 degrees and jumped on several others of various aspects with no signs of instability. Ski cuts on steeper, unsupported slopes only produced minor sluffing in the upper few inches. Found 6 mm Surface Hoar on one particular open northerly slope at 10,600 ft that produced an ECTP9 under a soft 35 cm slab. Hasty pits and another Extended Column Test near ridgeline did not reveal sensitive surface hoar or produce propagating results.

Date of Observation: 01/16/2023
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Slate River Road to Poverty Gulch and ski tour by Baxter Basin.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Visibility was marginal but I got reasonable views of Happy Chutes, Climax Chutes, Schuylkill Ridge, Cascade and some glimpses of Baxter Basin and Richmond Mountain. Loose Dry avalanches were common on very steep slopes near and below treeline. Most seemed to be from tree bombs or shedding cliff features. I did not see any significant propagation and the debris piles were small.
Weather: Light snowfall late morning through mid-afternoon that amounted to an inch or so. Winds remained light with very little evidence of drifting overnight or during the day. I occasionally was able to hear stronger winds at the ridge top. Storm total at 230 pm was 17″ with 1.3″ snow water equivalent at 10,700 feet.
Snowpack: Shovel Tilt Test’s revealed easy results in the top 6 inches and moderate results at the base of the storm snow. ECTN easy score at base of storm snow but no propagating results. Cracking in the new snow was limited to a ski length at most and was typically in top 6 inches with a few harder cuts cracking to base of the storm snow. Loose Dry avalanches were easy to initiate in the low-density snow. Test slopes produced no signs of slab instability. I looked in several places for buried surface hoar and did not find it. Snow depths in a wind-affected area at 10,600 feet ranged from 200 cm to 300+ cm.

Date of Observation: 01/16/2023
Name: Billy Barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite weather observations.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Snowed most all day of the Sunday but lightly except for an hour mid afternoon, which was followed by an hour or so of moderate wind, which then let up. Hooray for that, though it moved a good bit of snow. There was 5″ new with 0.32″ of water. Light to moderate snow overnight becoming very light a couple hours before sunrise with 9″ new and water 0.49″, so the 24 hour total is 14″ new with total water a much more historical normal 0.81″ being 6% water content. The snowpack reached the winter deepest (and the current) of 63½”. Currently the cloud cover is- well, go ahead, guess, with light snow and no wind. Temperature range was a hgh of 36F and the low and current 17F. No visibility. billy
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/15/2023
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Brush Creek TH to West Brush Creek on snowmobile. Toured up sunny side of Teocalli to 11,600 feet.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: none observed. Visibility was obscured so I never got a chance to see Union Chutes terrain or even the South Face of Teocalli.
Weather: Light snow and wind through around noon. Snowfall and wind picked up around 1pm — new snow accumulations of around 5 inches at 230pm at 11,500.
Snowpack: I dug two profiles, one on a south slope below the treeline and another on an east slope near the treeline (see images). Oddly enough, the first profile on south produced propagating results at three different interfaces (all facets below crust collapses). However, I skinned up through 1,600 feet of this fairly open terrain and never got a collapse or sign of instability even while ski-cutting steep test slopes on the way down. The east profile produced no propagating results in standardized tests, but when I removed most of the slab above the 12/20 facet layer, I was able to reproduce moderate propagating results. These results seem to show a decrease in sensitivity overall but genuine concern for triggering avalanches from shallow locations where the wind or terrain has created trigger points.

While descending in the afternoon, there was a clear change in storm snow. I was able to easily produce ski-length cracks in the top inch of storm snow. Not a problem where I was skiing, but a clear indication that places with more storm snow or wind drifting were developing a new surface storm snow problem.

Date of Observation: 01/15/2023
Name: Zach Kinler

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Ohio Pass Trailhead

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed a shallow but widely propagating slide in the upper snowpack on a south aspect in the Anthracites. It likely ran Friday with the warming.
Weather:
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/15/2023
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic

Weather: Snow starting just a few hours ago and light with 1½” new and water 0.13″ as another week of gloom starts up. Currently overcast and snowing lightly with a light SW wind and the overnight temperature range was 22-23ºF after high’s the past 2 days of 40 and 36F. Current snowpack is at 51″ with average for this date 42″. Snowfall is 14% below average but SWE is 9% above.

Date of Observation: 01/14/2023
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate. 9,500-11,000. E and NE

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: A Partly cloudy sky in the morning became mostly cloudy by early afternoon. Generally light winds. Mild temps.

Snowpack: This was just a weather station visit for some site maintenance. Along the way, I didn’t notice any obvious signs of instability. Generally, the snow surface in this area didn’t look partially concerning with the incoming storm, but I eventually started to find a few locations with small surface hoar. A low-angle NE slope at 11,000ft had an HS of 260cm. A meadow near Pittsburg at 9,300ft had an HS of 165cm.