Date of Observation: 12/07/2022
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: It continues sunless with off and on wind, though none overnight. Almost constant snow except from mid-afternoon Tuesday until night but light snowfall overnight (4″, 0.21″ SWE) and very light density. The 24-hour totals are 9½” new and water 0.61″ with currently 30″ on the ground. Obscured again with basically no current snowfall except for a few flakes while calm. Temperature stays mild after high of 28 and the low, and current, 19. No wind. The new snow is light enough to have a limited effect on snow stability, though snowpack was still collapsing in places late yesterday. And the clouds continue. billy

Date of Observation: 12/06/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Schuylkill Ridge. Traveled on SE, E, NE and N aspects to 11,400′.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A pair of large persistent slabs ran naturally this morning in First Bowl, probably sympathetic. From ridgetop, we remotely triggered another large slab in First Bowl which appeared to sympathetically trigger a large slab in Birthday Bowl. Crowns were 2 to 3 feet thick on average, failing on fist hard, large grained facets. Spotted three D1-1.5 natural persistent slabs in Climax Chutes. Numerous skier triggered and natural loose dry avalanches on all aspects below treeline, D1 in size. The light was too flat to see much else.
Weather: Snowfall rates tapered by the time we got to the trailhead around 11 a.m. Light to moderate rates this afternoon, with a short period of heavy snowfall. About a foot of low-density snow accumulated since early this morning. Winds were moderate at ridgetop with a decent amount of blowing snow.
Snowpack: Widespread collapsing and shooting cracks on everything with old snow at the base, mostly just while skinning and no stomping required. Went to a few frequent flier slopes BTL that rumbled and shattered but didn’t move. NTL suspect slopes produced a mix of shattering but staying put and shattering and releasing. On southerly aspects lacking old snow layers, we saw no evidence of slab instabilities except some cracking in the storm snow near wind drifted terrain. Sheltered terrain sluffed readily in the top 12″ of snow.

Date of Observation: 12/06/2022
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic Townsite

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A moderately sized slab released ran off the peak area of Gothic yesterday but the new snow is very light so far so shouldn’t affect anything yet. It was about a 2-3 deep fracture facing east northeast running to ground just below the peak but starting at the ridgetop. It ran about 1800 feet but stopped before the run-out zone.
Weather: Very wet, dense snow Monday morning before stopping, then starting back near midnight but becoming heavy starting around 5 a.m. today but with a very light density balancing the snow out at 6″ new and water content 0.42″. Snowpack reached 24″. Currently obscured and snowing moderately with only light SW wind, though the wind was strong midnight until stopping around 4 before snow started up.

Date of Observation: 12/05/2022
Name: Zach Guy and Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Traveled on west facing terrain near and below treeline near Lake Irwin and east facing terran below treeline above Elk Creek.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: On west facing terrain at Irwin: We remotely triggered a small persistent slab from about 20 feet away (See video). The soft slab was up to 16″ thick, and failed on the topmost facet layer in stack of several facet/crust layers that were buried a week ago. The other steep slopes that we traveled near had all avalanched previously. Same for east facing terrain in Elk Creek: all of the paths that we approached slid naturally, probably during the Nov 29 storm.
Weather: Overcast, light snow and graupel, moderate ridgeline winds with periods of light transport. Mild temps.
Snowpack: Frequent collapsing and shooting cracks while breaking trail on west-facing terrain in the 20* to 30* range. The collapses are occurring on thin and weak facet crust sandwiches. Collapses were somewhat less common on east-facing terrain, perhaps because the slabs are thicker, but plenty of collapses nonetheless. There was an impressive amount of graupel in the top 10 cm of the snowpack. The slab continues to get stiffer and more supportive to skis, making for fun and fast skiing on low angle terrain. After clearly identifying that the terrain we were scouting had slid earlier in the week, we felt comfortable riding on those steeper pitches.

Date of Observation: 12/05/2022
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: A little bit of sun yesterday (hooray) as it stayed dry, then cloudy and very warm overnight with light but very dense snow, mostly graupel, with 2″ new and water 0.22″. Wind light to none. There is 19″ of snow on the ground matching this winter’s deepest. Currently a very light snowfall with today’s high 33F (yesterday was 36) and the current 28 after a low of 27. Is it April? –The graupel is making for another weak layer in the snowpack as the current pack continues to collapse.

Date of Observation: 12/04/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass viewed from Gothic Road

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Recent small slide just before Tuttle Cabin. See photo.

Date of Observation: 12/04/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Pavement avalanche obs.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few natural avalanches from east and northeast aspects of Whetstone and Gothic Mountain. The Gothic avalanche clearly is big enough to bury a person(D2) and a couple on Whetstone looked to be large(D2) as well, but visibility was poor so made my best estimates on size.
Weather: Mostly cloudy conditions in the early afternoon when I made the observation.
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 12/04/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Baxter Basin and Cascade Mtn, Traveled on various aspects up to 11700′

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Numerous natural D1.5 to D2 slabs from the last storm, most on North to East N/ATL, with a couple that rounded to Southeast and South-Southeast aspects. Light was flat so it was hard to make out exact sizes and crown connectivity. See photos. Tried getting some smaller terrain features to release without any luck.
Weather: Clouds increased mid-morning. Light winds with light transport at times. Mild temps.
Snowpack: Frequent collapses, some localized, some rumbling across entire terrain features. Slabs are generally 2 feet thick and average 4F hard over our well-advertised weak layers. We targeted a pit on a due south slope that held old snow prior to the recent storms. The crust capping the large-grained facets is about 6 cm thick, and tests did not propagate.

Date of Observation: 12/04/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Slate River Road

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Numerous recent D1 – D1.5 avalanches on Schuylkill Ridge and a few D2,  on E-NE aspects N/BTL. A few D1.5-D2 in Redwell Basin as well. See photos. Looks like most of these ran during the storm on Friday, but a few look crisp enough that they might have run yesterday.

Date of Observation: 12/04/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Mt. CB

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few D1.5 to D2 slides on NE and E aspects of Schuylkill and Climax, N/BTL that ran sometime in the past 2 days. Good views of some alpine terrain without any obvious crowns, hard to say whether the winds smoothed avalanches over or were just too strong to properly load the classic start zones.
Weather:
Snowpack:

Photos: