Date of Observation: 03/06/2023
Name: Ben Pritchett

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek to Crystal Creek through Upper Taylor River to Taylor Pass.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Only a few cornice collapses, some which trundles vehicles size blocks. In one area near Star Pass the cornice chunks cracked a tiny D1 slab immediately below, but it did not propagate beyond the cornice collapse area.
Weather: Nice day, Southwest winds increased in the afternoon just enough to move snow along ridges. Valley bottom temperatures reached around 40 degrees
Snowpack: The March 3-4 wind event ravaged this area, scouring and sublimating snow surfaces in the alpine. The winds drifted snow deep into the treeline, forming discontinuous pencil-hard slabs in below-treeline meadows and behind wind-breaks near treeline.
Height of snow in wind-sheltered near treeline locations generally ranged from 140 to 180cm. We measured snow in the alpine generally around 150 to 170cm, but well over 300cm in drifts, with bare ground on ridges after the wind event.
We saw inconsistent new wind-slab formation in start zones, with scoured textures below many cornices adjacent to pockets of pencil hard drifts (mostly wind-eroded old drifts). These drifts proved unreactive, with no cracking seen through 50+ miles of terrain covered. The drifts were too hard to impact with snowpack tests.
Below 11,000′, snow surfaces wetted on southerly-facing terrain. We experienced a couple very localized collapses (with no visible cracking) where water percolated down to the mid-February crusts. Water was pooled on top of the uppermost crusts, around 30cm below the snow surface.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 03/06/2023
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Washington Gulch to Baldy Mountain and lap on Coneys at the end of the day.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: I observed a couple of older Wind Slab debris piles with blown-over crowns on southeast aspect in Baldy’s Rock Creek Bowl and a northwest pocket on Gothic Mountain. Fresh cornice-fall triggered slabs created large avalanches in Peeler Basin (different from the other reported slide) and north aspect of Schuylkill Peak into Baxter Basin.
Weather: Relentless SW winds around 30-40 mph in the alpine with gusts over 60 mph. Temps at low elevations out of the wind felt a bit above freezing and wet snow surfaces on sunny slopes.
Snowpack: We went hunting for recent hard slabs formed by the wind and did not encounter signs of instability on stiff, supportive-to-ski, drifts on northeast, east, and southeast aspects at different elevations. We ski-cut and skied several smaller slopes with obvious hard slabs up to 12″ thick without result. Recent Wind Slabs in this area appear to be stubborn or unreactive now. Minor drifting was observed throughout the day but did appear to produce any significant loading.

Date of Observation: 03/06/2023
Name: Ian Havlick

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Redwell Basin

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Cornice fall triggered deep slab in Redwell. Failed sometime after yesterday afternoon.

Date of Observation: 03/05/2023
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Southeast shoulder of Gothic to 11,500′, and east side of Snograss BTL.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Several natural D1-1.5 wind slab avalanches on Axtell, Whetstone, and the Shield (Redwell Basin). One in Redwell Basin that looked large (D2) from a distance.
Weather: Mostly cloudy skies north of town, partly cloudy south of town. Light winds below treeline except for some periods of strong gusts/blowing snow in valley bottom. Blowing snow continued for most of the day off of the high peaks, and near treeline was somewhere between the two.
Snowpack: Snow surfaces remained soft and relatively unaffected by winds below treeline on Snodgrass. In sheltered terrain, the snow surface was denser and creamier compared to yesterday, with no new slab formation. As we moved into more wind exposed near treeline terrain, surfaces were heavily wind affected, varying from eroded to the last crust or loaded into hard thin slabs. Fresh wind slabs on small terrain features ranged from 3″ to 16″ thick. Some produced cracking, some produced collapses, and others gave no feedback to stomps or ski cuts. I didn’t ski cut the larger looking slabs in a proper windloaded start zone because I don’t like messing with hard slabs.

Date of Observation: 03/05/2023
Name: Irwin Guides

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Irwin Tenure

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Candy’s SS-ASc-D1-I 8-10″ X 30′ X 200′ MFC E aspect NTL

Pre-E SS-AE-D1- I 8-10″ X 40′ X 150′ MFC E NTL

NC SS-ASc-D1-I. 6-8″ X 40′ X 150′ MFC SE NTL
Weather: From 2100-1100 the winds averaged in the mid 40’s from the SW with several gusts in the 60’s-70’s topping out at 87 last night.
Snowpack: A few wind slabs on E NTL reactive to ski cuts, some quality breaker wind board on W N/ATL, and some nice pow stashes in the safe places down low amongst the forest creatures.

Date of Observation: 03/05/2023
Name: Ben Ammon

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Coney’s

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Hella blowy.
Snowpack: 10,550′ NE 30* slope HS 295cm
ECTN 24 down 35cm
ECTN 27 down 50cm
ECTN 30 down 80cm
second ECT produced same results
no propagation or reactivity down to 110cm

Date of Observation: 03/04/2023
Name: Danny H

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Travelled up to the Snodgrass saddle and then up towards Gothic through an southeast facing couloir.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Remnant avalanche that came through the spork couloir down Gothic probably from the wind loading last week. Also saw evidence of cracking with a 4-inch thick propagating crack that gave on the old wind crust from last week.
Weather: Calm and overcast until around 4pm when ridgeline winds began ripping.
Snowpack: Dug a test pit to assess the faceted layer about 2 feet down. The facets were overlaid by a 4cm thick melt-freeze crust most likely from the period before this last number of storms and we could not activate the weak layer with ECTX results.

Date of Observation: 03/04/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Carbon Peak

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Fresh wind slab in the past 24 to 48 hours off of east face of Carbon
Weather:
Snowpack: Pretty good collapse at 10,000 ft along a broad ridge, snowdepth was 200 cm at that location.

Date of Observation: 03/04/2023
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Traveled on various aspects of Mt. Owen and Mt. Afley to 13,000′, mostly N/ATL.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A notable amount of avalanches in the new snow ran overnight, D1 to 1.5, with a couple long running slides approaching D2 in size. These appeared to be a combination of loose snow avalanches and soft slabs of wind drifted snow, on all aspects above treeline.
Conditions were relatively quiet today, I was able to ski trigger a small wind drift and get some shallow sluffs.
Weather: Thin overcast with enough solar to moisten some sunny slopes. Light winds most of the day started ramping up around 2 p.m. At 3p.m. we were on top of Afley and immersed in intense blowing snow and whiteout conditions during strong gusts.
Snowpack: 24-hour storm totals ranged from 10″ near treeline to 16″ in sheltered terrain above treeline! Low density with signs of wind drifting in the more exposed terrain. I produced some localized cracking in those drifts, up to 18″ thick or so. We observed one collapse on a west aspect near treeline of Afley Peak, estimated about 18″ deep on some older facet/crust layers.
Fetches were blown dry at ridgetop from last night’s winds, but there’s still plenty of loose snow available for transport (10-15″) further downslope in alpine fetches or in less exposed near treeline terrain for tomorrow’s winds to work with.

Date of Observation: 03/04/2023
Name: Ben A

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass East and North

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: Overcast most of the day with occasional moments of greenhousing, and Souths were warming.
Snowpack: 10,000′ E – HS 195cm
CTH down 25cm and 40cm
ECTN24 down 25cm, ECTN26 down 40cm
ECTP down 90cm on bonus taps after removing the ECTN results