Date of Observation: 11/22/2022
Name: Zach Guy and Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Skinned out to Carbonate Hill via Pearl Pass Road and returned the same route.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A small wet loose avalanche off of the SW side of Star Peak, probably ran yesterday.
Weather: Mild temps, some high thin clouds at times. Light winds
Snowpack: Observed one alarmingly loud collapse on a cross-drifted terrain feature on Carbonate Hill, on a SW aspect ATL. The slab was thin but hard. The loading pattern from last week’s winds appears to have blown snow off of all aspects near ridgeline start zones and deposited into concave catchments lower on slopes. Surfaces are wind-affected, hard, and variable above treeline, often with weak facets below hard wind crusts. Below treeline the snowpack is 8″ or less of cohesionless facets, ~2mm. Let’s just say the ski quality out there is sub-par.

Date of Observation: 11/10/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Purple Ridge, traveled on E, NE, and N aspects to 12,300′

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Some minor dry loose avalanches triggered by solar warming yesterday and today off of steep, rocky terrain features.
Weather: Clear, light ridgetop winds, temperatures rebounding.
Snowpack: Went hunting for feedback from our wind slab problem. There were only a few features of concern that I could safely approach and stomp around on, and I got minimal cracking. In contrast, these same types of features were more reactive late last week.
Otherwise, most terrain has soft snow that continues to facet and weaken. It’s becoming unsupportive below treeline and on shallower, rocky areas near treeline.

Date of Observation: 11/19/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: 9,800-12,500. Primarily SE aspects with a couple of variations to NE and E. Augusta.

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: Clear and Calm.

Snowpack: The moderate to strong winds from this past week sure has redistributed the snow and affected the snow surface. Surprisingly the snow was still skiing great, even in some areas where the snow surface didn’t look good from afar. We didn’t encounter any wind slab issues off the SE summit of Augusta. While the NE face had some thick drifts from recent cross-loading and looked problematic. We encountered another cross-loaded terrain feature lower down that also looked concerning. This feature again had a big fetch going into a NE aspect. There was a clear area where ski pen went from say 15cm in depth, to 1cm in depth, and back. All stacked on a weak-faceted snowpack. All in all, managing for wind slabs was the primary avalanche problem we encountered. Those wind loading patterns looked variable and that pattern wasn’t easy to describe in one particular way. There was also the slightest dusting of new snow that must have fallen on Friday and it was making it more difficult to identify some areas of harder wind slabs or wind board.

Snow surfaces stayed cold on SE slopes throughout the day.

Date of Observation: 11/18/2022
Name: Zach Guy Zach Kinler

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper East River, Nirvana Bowl on Baldy

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed a D1.5 Wind Slab that likely ran yesterday or overnight. Ski-triggered another Wind Slab from ridgeline adjacent to the natural. This one propagated a bit wider and reached D2 size entraining the softer snow in wind-protected terrain as it ran around 600 ft. Debris was up to 5 ft deep.
Weather: Partly Cloudy, felt like January, light NW winds with moderate gusts.
Snowpack: We traveled primarily on S and SE aspects near and above treeline. 4-5 inches of low-density, faceting snow is resting on crusts from earlier in November.  As we gained elevation towards the ridge a thin wind crust was present on the surface. Closer to the ridge the wind crust grew to an obviously thicker slab up to 18″ thick. Northerly winds caused off-and-on snow transport onto southerly aspects.

Date of Observation: 11/15/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Mt. Baldy, traveled on E to N aspects to 11,900′

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Intentionally ski triggered a pair of small slab avalanches on an east facing, cross drifted ridge near treeline. The slabs were up to 12″ thick, ~25 ft wide, 4F+ on average. One previous natural on a NE aspect, likely from last week. All small in size.
Weather: Too cold for my toes. Light breeze, no snow transport. Scattered cloud cover. An inch of snow in the past 24 hours.
Snowpack: Found ourselves on a particularly chatty east facing slope that produced numerous collapses and shooting cracks ranging from 10 to 50 feet, failing on a thin, faceted crust (Nov 3). Once we got to a ridge where it was more drifted, we popped a couple of slabs by collapsing the slope while skinning. No other signs of instability on other slopes.

Date of Observation: 11/13/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Working on a weather station on Carbonate Hill, descended Timbered Hill to Death Pass, traveling mostly on south to west aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A small natural windslab on Carbonate from last storm. D1.
Weather: Light winds, clouds streaming in from the south. Ridgetop temp in the 20’s.
Snowpack: Fairly continuous coverage across all aspects at higher elevations, with the deepest/most continuous coverage on north to east facing terrain. Mid to low elevation southerlies are the only bare slopes at the moment. A couple of inches of recent snow was redistributed by winds above treeline and is now faceting over a variety of wind hardened surfaces. Near surface facets are more developed and more widespread as we descended in elevation; snowpack is generally faceted throughout below treeline, with one or two crusts on sunnier aspects. Snow depths are generally about 12″ to 18″ at 11,000′ and only a few inches at valley bottom.

Date of Observation: 11/11/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Baldy Mountain via Gothic Corridor.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed a couple of small recent avalanches than appeared to fail in the recent snow. All above treeline; north through east aspects.
Weather: Cold air temperatures, light northwest winds with some occasional gusts transporting tiny amounts of snow under mostly clear skies.
Snowpack: We traveled mostly through easterly aspects up to 12,200. New snow accumulations ranged from 4-8″. Relatively light winds during and following the recent snowfall did not produce much loading; a nearby northwest-facing (windward) alpine feature was still holding much of the recent storm snow (see photo). While ascending easterly slopes near treeline we experienced a couple of moderate-sized collapses; a test profile revealed facets sitting atop the 11/3 melt/freeze crust. The overlying slab was around 60cm thick and remains soft in sheltered areas but could produce avalanches on terrain features with previous drifting. The most recent snowfall made it difficult to visually identify terrain features with previous drifting and stiffer more cohesive slabs. Additionally, we traveled on alpine southeast-facing terrain and found around 8″ of new snow resting on a supportive to skis melt/freeze crust with a foot of dry snow below that with some ice columns supporting the crust to the ground.

Date of Observation: 11/11/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate. Traveled on SE to NE aspects to 12,000′.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few minor point releases and a harmless soft slab that ran naturally during the storm on Mineral Point, all D1.
Weather: Chilly, light breeze at ridgetop, clear skies.
Snowpack: 4″ to 6″ of settled new snow, a little deeper in drifted terrain. Fairly minor amounts of wind effect in the new snow, with isolated cracking in shallow drifts near ridgeline. I targeted a test pit on a terrain feature that was heavily cross-loaded from last weekend’s northwest winds. See photo. I got hard propagating results in facets below a crust near the ground (11/3 interface). The slab was 1F hard and about 2 feet thick. Poor structures like this appeared to be fairly isolated throughout the terrain (based on probing and visuals), likely just in heavily drifted features. We also observed several localized collapses underfoot on low angle east facing slopes near treeline. The collapses were on the same weak layer, but the crust was thinner and without much of a slab above it.  Below treeline shady aspects are soft throughout without slab development and no signs of instability. The fresh snow surface is soft and fairly uniform across the terrain right now..no doubt the facet machine is cranking with our current and upcoming weather pattern.

Date of Observation: 11/07/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Toured into Peeler Basin and upper Oh-Be-Joyful Basin from Lake Irwin, traveling on various aspects up to 12,000′

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: Just some rollerballs on southerly aspects today.
Weather: Mild, few clouds, light to moderate SW winds.
Snowpack: Shallow and wind hammered sums it up. Traveled mostly near and above treeline, where its tough to find snow surfaces softer than 4F, except for random patches of unsupportive facets. Last weekend’s winds did some damage, with lots of erosion from W to NW winds. The snowpack is weakest on N and NW slopes, but generally lacks a slab except for isolated pockets of deeper crossloading. Surfaces on those slopes were stiff wind crusts or softer sastrugi, with faceting through much of the snowpack. The east quadrant held recently drifted snow up 1F hard, highly variable in slab thicknesses up to at least 18″. Kind of spooky to travel on because it wasn’t always obvious if you were on a stiff slab or just a firm wind crust without some digging. Stability tests on east aspects produced moderate propagating results on the 11/3 interface (a faceted crust), though we observed no signs of instability on the slopes that we traveled. I avoided approaching some of the meatiest looking drifts for fear of remote triggering or getting tangled in a stiffer slab. Southerly aspects were getting cooked into what will be a supportive crust tomorrow.
The thin ice crust described in previous obs was also present near the snow surface in some areas; it appeared to be formed by a riming event in this area – generally present only on terrain windward to southwest flow, up to ridgetop. It was on the south side of Scarp Ridge, in a few spots in Peeler, and absent in OBJ.

Date of Observation: 11/06/2022
Name: Eric Murrow Ben Pritchett

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Snowmobile ride from Washington Gulch to Schofield Pass area. Ski tour on the northern end of Cinnamon Mountain.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: We triggered one small avalanche on a northeast-facing slope, around 11,900′. The avalanche was triggered on a 25-degree slope just off the ridge and propagated into an adjacent wind-drifted feature over 40 degrees in steepness
Weather: Ridgeline Wind Speed: 5-10 mph
Ridgeline Wind Direction: W
Wind Loading: None
Temperature: 33 F
Sky Cover: Overcast
Depth of New Snow: 2 cm
Depth of Total Snow: 60 cm
Weather Description: Warm (just above freezing), snowing lightly (even misting rain off mid day).
Snowpack: We found the November 5th rain crust throughout our trip. Above 11,000 the crust is too thin to play a long-term role, but it’s worth tracking the evolution of this crust below treeline if it remains near the snow surface with cool weather. It could become a problematic faceted crust in time.
Snow height ranged from 20-30cm deep in lower Washington Gulch up to an average 60-70cm deep in wind-sheltered locations near treeline in the Paradise Divide area.
We found recently drifted slabs mostly above treeline, on northerly and easterly-facing slopes near ridgelines. Only the wind-loaded features with a broad and open fetch on their windward side posed a problem. Fresh slabs from the wind on Saturday were generally in the 40-50cm range, resting on a layer of small (1mm) facets.
Wind-sheltered slopes were right-side-up, with denser supportive snow near the ground and soft snow on top.