Date of Observation: 12/21/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Washington Gulch Road to Elkton Knob and the southerly side of Baldy.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: none observed
Weather: Around 3 inches of new snow by 3pm. Continuous light snowfall during the day amounted in very little accumulation. Most new snow fell overnight. Moderate WSW winds at ridge top, some gusts were strong.
Snowpack: While traveling through several drifted near treeline features, we produced cracking up to 15 feet in the storm snow. Cracks were in lower-density storm snow as most leeward features near treeline had stiff old snow surfaces from previous winds. Wind drifts up to 10 inches were observed immediately below cornices/terrain breaks but quickly diminished to just a few inches on a feature scale. I suspect you could have triggered small avalanches in the storm snow at upper elevations but the size would have generally been harmless to a person.
In sheltered areas facing the north half of the compass, the old snow surface was comprised of small grain facets, generally less than 1 mm, and looked weak enough to not tolerate significant loading before small avalanche activity begins.
I dug a single profile in a leeward northeast-facing feature at 11,300 feet to look at the basal facets. I chose to dig here as it would demonstrate a best-case scenario for improvement in basal facets as the depth was around 150cm with 125cm of slab resting above. The basal facets were 4-finger hard (softer end of 4-finger harness) and showed clear signs of rounding, but remain far softer than the hard, drifted slab above. It still appears possible to trigger an avalanche in basal weak layers where snow depths are variable leaving thinner slabs above the weak layer.

Date of Observation: 12/20/2022
Name: Evan Ross Dan Hohl

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Schuylkill Ridge. 9,000-11,500. NE.

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: Clear sky becoming overcast. Calm wind. A couple of snowflakes fall in the afternoon. Sure hope they figure out how to multiply…

Snowpack: In this specific terrain that we traveled the persistent slab problem was somewhere in the Stubborn and specific, or stubborn and isolated, category. Common terrain with the same specific features didn’t all hold the problem, so maybe more stubborn and isolated.

The majority of avalanche terrain had previously avalanched earlier in December, refilled with some amount of snow, but was lacking much of any slab. Or in other areas that didn’t previously avalanche, the old slab is being eaten by the faceting process as we often see this time of year under these weather conditions.

PSa structure is becoming isolated in the terrain we traveled while the facet sluff problem is growing. The snow surface consisted of small SH and a thickening layer of NSF.

The skiing conditions were great and tracks had begun stepping out into more aggressive terrain features.

Date of Observation: 12/18/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate to Paradise Divide and Cinnamon Mtn, traveling mostly on southerly aspects and ridgelines.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Nothing new in this area since my visit to Baldy two days ago, except for the Augusta slide reported by Kinler. New vantage of more crowns from last week’s winds and older.
Weather: Partly cloudy, light to moderate southwest winds, no snow transport.
Snowpack: Snow surfaces are faceted and weak below treeline, with thin sun crusts in the upper few inches on sunbaked slopes. Where recent drifting overlaps with these layers, I easily triggered shooting cracks and collapses up to 6″ deep. These were harmless in size and fairly isolated, but a good indicator of how the current surface will be a problem with future loading. Above treeline, the snow surface is heavily worked by winds, ranging from hard sastrugi to hard wind board to hard wind slab that produce no signs of instability. I did not experience any collapses or signs of instability on basal weak layers either.

Date of Observation: 12/18/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Various Aspects, primarily between 10,800ft and 11,800ft.

Observed avalanche activity: No

Snowpack: Informal observation, just traveling through the terrain.

Gladed westerly facing slopes around 30 degrees produced several shooting cracks. Skis were punching through the slab on hard turns.

ESE-facing slopes gave no obvious signs of instability with snowmobiles jumping and bouncing around on low 30-degree terrain next to steeper slopes. Felt really easy to get sucked into more aggressive terrain given the lack of obvious signs of instability.

Date of Observation: 12/18/2022
Name: Zach Kinler

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Saddle between Augusta and Purple.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Fresh persistent slab off Augusta/Purple saddle. See photo.

Date of Observation: 12/17/2022
Name: Scott Toepfer

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Yule Creek

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: N’ly aspect off the ‘Nipple’ south of Ant up Yule Creek. Big. Estimate crown was 15-20 feet, whole face below the summit cliff band pulled out to ground, wall to wall. We did not notice it yesterday, (and we were looking up that way a lot) or this morning, but we may not have noticed this morning while we trying to stay warm. I’m going to classify it as HSNR4D3G Not sure starting elevation or other dimensions but the crown was visible from a long ways away. I’d bet money it hit valley floor. Sorry, no fotos.

Date of Observation: 12/17/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snowmobiled out West Brush and skied on the southwest side of Teocalli up to 12,200′.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A handful of recent slab avalanches up to D2 in size on the eastern half of the compass. There’s been so much wind in this area that crowns are a bit harder to decipher (wind slab vs. persistent slab) and put an age on it. I’m only documenting the slides that look to have fairly recent debris; there were a few others that are either older or just blown in now.
Weather: Cold temps this morning, pleasant this afternoon in the sun. Calm winds.
Snowpack: We noted two collapses while snowmobiling in the flats at valley bottom, radiating about 30 to 50 feet. Slabs there are about 18″, soft and faceting. On southwest terrain, there were no persistent slab concerns: now from the past few weeks is shallow and faceting now (1-2mm), capped by various thin melt freeze or wind crusts in some areas, without any underlying old snow. There were a few cross-loaded gullies where we managed for recent shallow drifts (both hard and soft), but they were unreactive to our ski cuts in steep terrain. Winds did a number on the alpine in this area; some of the problematic terrain is heavily eroded now, other terrain saw loading. Surfaces N/ATL are all worked by the wind.

Date of Observation: 12/16/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Anthracite Range, Schuylkill Ridge, Axtell. Submitted via text or morning bino tours.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: See photos and details below. Failures sometime in the past few days.

Date of Observation: 12/16/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Mt. Baldy

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Adding more avalanches to the previous observation. Ruby, Afley, Peeler Peak, Treasury, and Gothic. The Gothic slide may have run today, the others ran sometime in the past 4 days.