Date of Observation: 02/18/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Baxter Basin area

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: I observed a couple of natural slab avalanches in the near treeline elevation band – small size on northeast and east aspects. These slides were not visible at 3 pm on Thursday afternoon.
Weather: Seasonably cool temperatures with gusty winds above treeline and generally light winds in the basin.
Snowpack: We skied a northwest-facing piece of terrain near treeline and found around 5 inches of new snow resting on a patchwork of thin wind boards or soft near-surface facets. We selected terrain to avoid recent and previous wind-loading. Probed extensively on the uptrack looking for thicker hard slabs beneath the new snow and did not find anything of concern.

Date of Observation: 02/18/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Primary 11,000 to 12,600ft on NE-E facing terrain.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few recent shallow slabs or dry sluffs at this end of the Ruby Range. All from some form of recent wind loading. D1’s.

Weather: Partly Cloudy. Moderate winds were consistently blowing snow at upper elevations. The wind appeared to be decreasing in the afternoon, or the snow fetch was drying out.

Snowpack: Weirdness ontop of the old snow NSF junk about sums it up. The old wind board over facets that formed over a week ago now, is inconsistent and has no rime or reason in its distribution at ATL elevations. We didn’t encounter anywhere with an avalanche problem related to this, but we did find thin wind-boards over the NSF that lead to uncertainty about whether we would randomly encounter something thicker or more problematic. In the afternoon we snowmobiled around some NTL previously wind-loaded terrain with no notable results.

Where there wasn’t an old wind board on the NSF, it was just the recent snow on the NSF. There wasn’t enough new snow to create a slab over the weak layer. Managing for wind slabs was great travel advice. We didn’t encounter much for a wind slab but we were not traveling on a ridgeline. Up higher near the ridgelines it didn’t look like there was a good distribution of fresh wind-loading as many areas looked blown off or just not very loaded.

Date of Observation: 02/17/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Up standard Purple Ridge track and descended from the ridge through Purple Palace.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed numerous small Loose Dry avalanches on north through east aspects coming out of rocky upper elevation terrain. One fresh shallow slab immediately below a ridge top in Wolverine Basin and another deeper-looking crown on an northeasterly-facing part of the apron in Wolverine.
Weather: Partly cloudy skies in mid-morning, orographically driven cloud cover and very light snowfall midday over the spine of the Ruby Range, and clearing skies by sunset. Moderate northerly winds with stronger gusts through 1pm shifting to the northwest later in afternoon.
Snowpack: New snow accumulations maxed out at 5 inches on Purple Ridge near treeline. North to northwest winds transported snow throughout the day in the Ruby Range onto east through south aspects at upper elevations. At ridgetop, I was able to get some ski-length cracking in fresh cornice formation, but drifted features up to 14 inches deep did not crack. On shaded slopes below treeline, I found the 5 inches of storm snow resting on a mix of weak facets, friable melt/freeze crusts, and supportive windboard and did not find signs of instability. It seems like there were isolated Wind Slabs up high, the potential for old hard slabs from previous winds, and sluffs on weak shady slopes, but no Storm Slab problem.

Date of Observation: 02/17/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Observation from East Beckwith via social media message

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Large natural avalanche on a northeast aspect. Appears to be a slab, but can’t make out the exact details. Certainly large enough to bury and kill a person.
Weather:
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 02/16/2022
Name: Eric Murrow & Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Schuylkill. NE-E-S, 9,000-11,300ft.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: More skier triggered sluffs. The most notable was initiated on the first turn off the ridge and ran 1,000ft and through a good section of 35-degree terrain in the avalanche track. That part wasn’t necessarily new. However, the additional new snow added enough volume to push this sluff to the line of a D2 avalanche. NE facing slope.  Low in the track, the moving loose avalanche released a small, thin hard slab where previous winds drifted snow.

Weather: Mostly cloudy with convective bursts of snow moving through like a summertime thunderstorm. During the clearings, the snow was clearly blowing off of Scarps Ridge and periods of moderate winds where drifting snow at lower NTL elevations.

Snowpack: 4″ of new snow was measured at 4pm, 9,700ft. We didn’t encounter any changes to the current list of avalanches problems. Mostly just added volume for the loose snow avalanche problem and drifting snow at upper elevations.

The old snow surface in many areas is extremely weak. Similar to early season conditions when we have a large-grained faceted snowpack that is just starting to accumulate new snow. The only difference is that it’s February and the weak layer is widespread. Northerly facing slopes are a sandbox of NSF. Easterly facing slopes and some NE facing slopes had a thin collapsible crust capping those same large-grained and very weak NSF. Some of those crusts looked like they could collapse with little load and aid in propagation. Any triggered avalanche, slab or loose, would then gouge into the weak old snow, gaining additional volume.

South and SE-facing slopes in this area had strong crusts with many peculation columns extending into the snowpack below. Here we couldn’t initiate sluffs in the new snow on 38-degree slopes.

Date of Observation: 02/15/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Slate River to Paradise Divide.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Headed up to the previously reported avalanche on Paradise Divide for a little check-in since it didn’t quite fit the mold. This avalanche failed on a thin crust capping 1mm, very soft, faceted grains over harder 1F hard faceted grains. The slab above was P+ hard. As reported, the crown was in fairly low angle southerly facing terrain.

After closer inspection, this appeared to be a monster wind wale that failed on a weaker than average south-facing snowpack due to the lower angle of the terrain. The fetch for this avalanche is massive, square mile range. The fetch from the paradise divide area has created a number of hard slabs that have loaded into the SE to SW facing slopes below the pass.

In a location near the crown, on a steeper 35 degree south-facing slope, without the recent wind loading. The surface crust was 3 to 4cm’s thick, with large percolation column extending into the facets. The snowpack here was only about 100cm’s deep and didn’t have much layering given the lack of storms this winter.

I didn’t encounter any obvious signs of instability while traveling on the margins of some of the other hard slabs in the area. Once you were out on the slabs there was no way the weight of a human was going into the snowpack given how hard the snow now is. However if you did manage to find a trigger point you could get a similar result to this avalanche. The snowpack has most likely become quieter since the last party had come through this area.

Weather: Mostly cloudy, with a nice break in the clouds early afternoon for things to both warm and soften up. Overcast by late afternoon. Warm and breezy.

Snowpack: Snow surface obs between 11,500ft and 10,500ft. Westerly slopes were made up of large-grained facets in some areas, and a 2cm crust capped the facets in other areas. A slight change in slope angle or aspect allowed for the crust vs straight facets. SW and SE aspects had a slightly stronger crust but still very concerning with a load. On south facing slopes, the crust was in the 3 to 4 cm range with big percolation column going down into the facets. Not much layering in this snowpack given the few storms this winter and dry 2022…

Date of Observation: 02/14/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: The center of the donut hole

Observed avalanche activity: No
Snowpack: Got a collapse on a recently drifted feature in tight trees on a NE aspect near treeline. The slab was about a foot thick, and about the size of a dinner table. The slab formed in trees because there was an open northerly fetch upwind that funneled into the trees at this location.

Date of Observation: 02/13/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: 9,000ft-11,500ft. NW-N-E

Observed avalanche activity: No

Avalanches: Small loose dry avalanches on steep slopes near 40 degrees. Mostly northerly facing, and 1 east facing slope around 11,400ft.

Weather: Clear, warm, calm.

Snowpack: Small sluffs were the main thing we ran into on steep slopes, near 40 degrees. We didn’t encounter a persistent slab avalanche problem on the ridge between Wolverine and Redwell basin up to 11,500ft in elevation. Where we skied off the east side of the ridge just below 11,500 we triggered small sluffs. There could have been a couple isolated pockets with a slab avalanche problem in that area that were slightly higher up. Didn’t see much for loading in the alpine.