Date of Observation: 11/28/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Red Lady Bowl, traveled on east and southeast aspects to 12,000′.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: Got a few shooting cracks up to 10′ and tiny wind slabs to pop (3″ thick) on freshly drifted rollovers NTL.
Weather: Overcast. Moderate winds with periods of light blowing snow. Saw a few small plumes on other peaks.
Snowpack: Targeting weak layer development on the sunny aspects. In summary, the crust/facet layers are very weak on east aspects and get progressively stronger as you turn toward due south.The stronger crusts are more likely to survive early loading but could fail later in the season as more weight stacks up.

The snowpack structure on east to southeast aspects is a stack of crusts with very weak 2mm facets between, with some grains near the ground up to 4mm. The crusts change from stronger, thicker, and supportive on skis on due Southeast to very thin, punchy, and collapsible on due East.   See pits.  The crusts also appear to get thinner at higher elevations. There is also a surprisingly well-developed layer of facets on top of the crusts (~1.5mm facets). However, today’s winds were blowing this layer away in the alpine start zone. I found it fairly frequently, but not everywhere, in more sheltered rollovers lower in the bowl.

Date of Observation: 11/28/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Lower Brush Creek and lower Cement Creek. Right in the donut hole.

Snowpack: Lower Brush Creek and lower Cement Creek is often characterized as being located within the “donut hole” portion of our greater forecast areas. This donut hole holds the least amount of snow when compared to the surrounding mountains. Anyway, this is of course the case right now.

Above treeline, old snow does exist around the compass. Though the southern half of the compass has spotty snow coverage on those slopes located closer to town and not as deep into the mountains.

Near treeline has old snow coverage on NW to NE. While W and E have some coverage but are fairly shallow and rough.

Below treeline, there is really just the northern quadrant to talk about for snow coverage. Even on north, the snow coverage is of course shallow, and often rough.

The camera is good a picking up “white” and “dark” colors but not so good at highlighting the finer details from afar. There is also a little bit of fresh snow in these photos and adding some white to non-problematic slopes.

Date of Observation: 11/25/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Anthracite Mountain Resort, northerly and east aspects to 11,200′.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Triggered a few shallow sluffs in East Bowl. They’re still quite small and not gouging through the whole snowpack like we’ve seen in previous seasons this time of year.
Weather: Clear, mild, calm.
Snowpack: Documenting weak layers on the shady aspects in advance of a pattern change next week. In short, it’s shallow and weak.  See profiles. The snow surface is very weak below treeline (F-) and will struggle to hold any kind of load. It’s faceted throughout, generally 1-1.5mm here. Sluffs are entraining the top 6″ or so, but would probably gouge deeper once they gained enough mass. In more wind-affected terrain NTL, the snowpack is more variable and surfaces are a stronger mix of wind crusts and old wind drifts. However, there’s plenty of weak, faceted snow below these harder layers. In previously wind-eroded areas, those facets are larger and more developed than below treeline.

Date of Observation: 11/24/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Purple Ridge Lap. Easterly, 9,600-11,500ft.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: None

Weather: Trace of new snow. Few clouds. Moderate winds continuing to transport a little snow near ridgelines.

Snowpack: The recent northerly wind event sure wasn’t kind to the snow surface and riding conditions. Many slopes now have a variety of lovely textures like wind-board, wind crust, firm wind texture, soft wind texture, and wind-exposed crusts. Though it’s not all doom and gloom, there are still some areas with a soft snow surface, just fewer of those areas than a couple of days ago.

I didn’t encounter any thick wind drifts, but there were a lot of thin, hard slabs or wind-boards dispersed through the terrain. Given how weak the old snow is, these thin drifts often collapsed and occasionally produced shooting cracks. Though the actual slab size was very small. Looking around the area there were some cross-loaded terrain features and a few southerly-facing slopes, that may be holding some bigger slabs.

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.