Date of Observation: 02/07/2023
Name: Josh Jones
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Schuylkill Ridge NE
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Saw and triggered a few small loose sluffs on steep rollovers.
Snowpack: Probed at 10400 on a NE sheltered aspect, 175 CM.
Date of Observation: 02/06/2023
Name: Zach Guy
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Mount Emmons to 11,800′ on SE, E, and NE aspects.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Unintentionally ski triggered a small wind slab, about 10″ thick. I was hunting for wind slabs below a leeward ridgeline with unproductive ski cuts, but further down the slope than expected, a small pocket popped while I was skiing. Some folks at the trailhead reported triggering shallow soft slabs in Elk Creek area as well.
Weather: Cold, partly cloudy, a few brief flurries, and light to moderate northwest winds lightly drifting snow on ridgelines.
Snowpack: About 3″ to 4″ of new snow had been redistributed by southwest winds near and above treeline, with a bit of drifting shifting to northwest today. HS ranged from 180 to 210 cm near treeline where I probed. Also checked out a wind protected, northeast facing path that avalanched to near the ground in January. There, the snowpack was unusually shallow (HS 60 to 80cm in a few handpits), but the persistent slab structure appeared to be lacking the slab (snowfall after the avy has subsequently faceted), the original basal weak layer, or both. The most recent slab-forming event (late Jan) was unreactive in stability tests and while skiing steep terrain up to 40 degrees.
Date of Observation: 02/05/2023
Name: Chris Read
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Brush Creek to Friends Hut
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: 2 wet slides on Death Pass. Occurred sometime between 9:45 and 3:30.
Weather: Sunny, warm, windy
Snowpack: Sun effected, wet
Date of Observation: 02/06/2023
Name: Billy Barr
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite obs
Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: Snow started near midnight and continued generally light until around 5 a.m. with 3½” new and water of 0.30″. Snowfall was moderate density but wind driven so the measured amount is dense. Currently cloudy, windy and mild with the low 15F after a high yesterday of 43F. billy
Date of Observation: 02/05/2023
Name: Eric Murrow
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Slate TH to Poverty Gulch on sled. Tour into upper Poverty Gulch between Augusta and Purple
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A couple of loose avalanches from steep sunny features from recent days, small size.
Weather: Thin, high cloud cover turned into partly cloudy skies as the cloud deck lowered. Obvious increase in wind speeds in the PM. Blowing snow was frequent at the highest elevations during the afternoon, but actual loading and thin slab formation looked pretty isolated.
Snowpack: Toured around easterly aspects from 9,800 to 12,200 feet. Snowpack test on drifted alpine slope produced no results. Surfaces near and above treeline remain dry on west through north through east aspects or in the warmest shoulder aspect locations… fragile, soft crusts. The south half of the compass developed crusts 2 – 3 cm thick on steep slopes. The exception to this was sunny terrain with dry fetches nearby…these start zones had two thinner melt/freeze crusts from warming and drifting over recent days (like the test profile in photos). Slope scale sunnies at all elevations no longer seem as concerning for avalanches to break at the old storm interface now that crusts will remain frozen and presumably buried by the incoming storm.
We observed numerous aggressive ski/snowboard lines on north through east through south slopes over the past few days in this area without incident.
The Fireside Chat is back on Thursday, February 9th with Dr. Jeff Deems. Jeff is the Co-Founder, CTO, and Formulation Lead for Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc as well as a scientist at the CIRES National Snow and Ice Data Center. He explores spatial variability in mountain snowpacks using lidar remote sensing, physical modeling, field measurements, and of course, climbing skins and skis. He has spent many hours flying over and touring the snowpack of the Upper Gunnison Valley in an effort to understand the nature of mountain snowpacks. In this Fireside Chat, we will look at using Airborne Snow Observatories data to get accurate inventories of basin snowpacks and explore some emerging best practices for using digital mapping tools to navigate avalanche terrain and risk. We will be at Tully’s in CB South, starting at 7:00 pm but feel free to show up early to grab a drink, some delicious food, and catch up with your buddies.
Date of Observation: 02/04/2023
Name: Daniel Hogan
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Traveled up Copper Creek to get to gain the saddle above Zachary’s and continued up towards to check out the other side of the ridge. Skied down a bit to dig a pit just to looker’s left of the Zachary’s entrance with ETCP23 results that failed on the depth hoar layer around 30 cm above the ground surface.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Lots of small wet loose slides on south-southwest aspects.
Weather: Cool in the north/western protected valley, clear, between -12 to -5 C over the day.
Snowpack: Snow held up on north facing slopes, but had an inch or so crust in the sunny areas or anything that had a hint of a south facing aspect. Small runnels from melt water were visible on these south facing slopes.
Date of Observation: 02/03/2023
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Evan’s Basin
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Large natural slab avalanche out of Evan’s Basin. Guessing it ran yesterday (2/2)
Date of Observation: 02/03/2023
Name: Zach Guy
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Toured on southerly and northerly aspects from Scarp Ridge to Schuylkill Ridge through Peeler and OBJ basins.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Several small wet loose avalanches and a pair of soft slabs (~D1.5) on steep, sunbaked slopes that all appeared fresh in the past day or so, best guess is yesterday afternoon, based on the pattern of rollerballs associated with the slides. Also documented a handful of large slabs that ran during the last storm.
Weather: Strong inversion. Warm temps and strong sunshine on sunny slopes, just a few thin clouds. Calm winds.
Snowpack: Today’s goal was to cover ground and test a number of suspect slopes near and above treeline. Unfortunately, we are still getting consistent propagating results on the buried near surface facets and faceted crusts about two feet deep on all south and southeast slopes that we tested near treeline. These typically failed after additional loading steps (30 to 35 taps). I got non-propagating fractures on two pits on northerly aspects; one targeting a heavily drifted terrain feature above treeline adjacent to a large crown from the last storm (the slab was pencil hard). The other was a moderately drifted slope near treeline, 4F slab. I did not experience signs of instability underfoot except some rollerballs and pinwheels on sunny aspects.
Date of Observation: 02/02/2023
Name: Eric Murrow
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass front side.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A suspected remotely triggered avalanche and an adjacent ‘other’ avalanche. Maybe sympathetic maybe natural??
Weather: Clear skies, mild temperatures, and light winds.
Snowpack: I went to investigate the snowpack structure in an avalanche observation submitted on the morning of 2/2 ( original observation – https://cbavalanchecenter.org/solo-snod-surprise/ ). While driving to the Snodgrass TH, I observed another avalanche adjacent to the one reported. My observation comes from the looker’s right avalanche, not the one with the track next to it. This avalanche failed on a facet/crust layer in the middle of the snowpack; the total depth was around 3 feet with a 16-inch deep crown. I am uncertain of the exact interface date, but it was certainly prior to 1/27 which is the date for the last storm interface. Test results in two nearby places produced ECTN moderate and unstable ECTP 9 results. I think part of the avalanche failed above the crust and part of it failed below the crust. The bed surface was hard to make sense of due to warm temperatures from yesterday and the wet surface snow in the bed surface while I was on site around 2pm on Thursday. While exiting the crown site, I collapsed a portion of the hangfire, but it did not avalanche…likely due to lower slope angles. Sunny slopes in this area were wet in the top 2 inches of snow with another inch of moist snow below that.
