Date of Observation: 01/01/2021
Name: Mike Barney

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Location: below Round Two, Irwin
Aspect: West
Elevation: 11,100′

Avalanches: SS-AS-R1-D1-O 50 to 60cm deep, 50′ wide, and ran 150′ triggered on Friday (1/1/2021)
Weather: Light to Mod southwest winds scattered clouds and around 17F.
Snowpack: NTL west aspect- 50 to 110cm HS, with a pencil to knife hard mid-pack layer and about 25cm of depth hoar on the ground. BTL west aspect sheltered from the wind- 80cm HS with 4F- mid-pack and about 25cm of depth hoar at the base.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/03/2021

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Location: Anthracite Region
Aspect: North East
Elevation: 9200

Avalanches: No evidence of recent Avalanche Activity
Weather: Calm cold and Humid up high
Snowpack: Skiing 30 degrees or less and still whumphing in certain areas of the snowpack on the uphill .. our lovely persistant slab issue I suspect.

Widespread faceting and surface hoar:Faceted snow refers to snow grains within the snowpack that have transformed into larger, angular grains. Facets have weak bonds with neighboring snow grains.

If you don’t care about the consequences , get beyond yourself and consider the danger you put others in when you need to be rescued.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/02/2021
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Location: Ruby Range
Aspect: South East, South
Elevation: 10,700-12,600

Weather: Low clouds in the morning obscured the range, as those moved out a high cloud shield moved over for the mid day, with clearing in the afternoon. Increased winds were the main weather factor. Moderate speeds from the NW.

Snowpack: Snow surfaces that looked beautiful the last few days, had gotten affected by the recent increase in winds. In our case slopes that had the best SE to E tilt held soft snow surfaces, while some more southerly slopes had been blown back to old soft crusts or soft wind texture. Probably just due to the way the winds flowed through and around the terrain. In this area, there wasn’t much for new wind loading and the windward side of the terrain didn’t really have much snow for transport.

Several hand pits on S to SE facing slopes at upper elevations revealed no current avalanche problem. Never really found enough slab on the 12/10 curst to try and get a result. While skiing through areas that appeared to be more wind-loaded previously, also produced no results. Snowpack heights were measured were surprisingly shallow in the 40 to 60cm range on average. I wouldn’t have much trust in the snowpack structure observed during the next loading event. Those hand pits were on slope angles in the low 30-degree range. So the curst facet sandwich would be collapsible under new load with enough weight. Didn’t observe the thickness of those buried crusts on steeper slopes or the snowpack structure on the deeper looking sections of the slope.

Date of Observation: 01/02/2021
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Location: Poverty Gulch
Aspect: North, North East, East
Elevation: 9,600 – 12,200

Avalanches: One small natural wind slab that ran last night or this morning (E, NTL). No other fresh avalanches observed.
Weather: Moderate winds with light transport. Clouds increased through the day with a few snow flurries this afternoon.
Snowpack: Skinned, snowmobiled, stomped, and skied on dozens of previously untrammeled low angled slopes (mostly near/below treeline) without any obvious signs of instability today, in stark contrast to just about every tour in the past few weeks. It appears as if the snowpack in this deeper part of the zone is moving to a low likelihood, high consequence persistent slab problem. On a NE aspect near treeline, the slab is about 4 feet thick, mostly 1 finger hard. The 12/10 interface is 4F- to F+ 1.5 mm facets. Stability tests produced a mix of hard, propagating results (ECTP30) and propagation during isolation (ECTPV, which might have been user error).

Photos: