Date of Observation: 01/19/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Up Walrod

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: small slab on west facing slope, running next to the trail.
Weather: 1/19/2023
Sunny, 20s
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/19/2023
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Avalanches viewed from Reno Ridge in the Ruby Mountains. Views from a long way off.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A natural slab on Owen, east aspect, and another near Bichmond (along spine of Ruby Range by Cascade), southeast aspect. Both look to be small D2 avalanches in the recent storm snow. Probably big enough to bury a person, but viewed from 20 miles away.
Weather:
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/19/2023
Name: Jack Caprio

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Ruby Range

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Recent Avalanche on the south side of Ruby Peak. Large in size. Best guess is that it failed in the recent 40+ inches of storm snow, 2 to 3 feet deep.

Date of Observation: 01/19/2023
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek Road up Grassy Hill up Radio Tower Hill on snowmobile. Ski tour on eastern side of Radio Tower Hill.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Views into Southeast Mountains revealed just a few small Wind Slabs in alpine terrain. All appeared to be D1 in size, well short of D2;
Weather: Mostly clear skies with thin, high clouds sliding in around midday. Light winds before noon that went breathless at 12,000 feet in the afternoon. The recent storm cycle had a settle height of roughly 12″ at treeline.
Snowpack: I toured along a north-to-south ridgeline around 12,000 feet. No signs of instability underfoot while stomping along the thin edge of slabs on westerly start zones or drifted east through south terrain features. Weak layers are still obvious beneath slabs while probing on most aspects in this area but I was unable to produce any collapses. Snow profile on an alpine south slope showed several facet/crust layers with slabs stacked between but no propagating results (see photo). A northeast slope with a depth of 170cm near the treeline produced ECTX and PST END 65/120. I tried to find signs of instability and couldn’t; even without signs of instability or concerning test results, I would be hesitant to step into consequential terrain in this area for fear of finding a trigger point.

Snow depths near Reno Divide (11,300 feet) were 160cm, near Deadman’s TH (9,700 feet) in the middle portion of Cement Creek were 115cm.

Date of Observation: 01/19/2023
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Slate River Ruby Range area. Various aspects, NE-E,SE-S-W. 9,300-11,500ft

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few wind slabs, storm slabs, sluffs, and cornice breaks, but nothing real big or notable. Nothing looked like it was running on a persistent weak layer. Will attach the best highlights in pictures.

Weather: Headed out around 11am. Cloud cover had increased by that time with incoming high thin clouds. Somewhere in the partly cloudy to mostly cloudy range through the early afternoon. Calm wind. Beautiful day.

Snowpack: In general, a lot of things look deep and caked in snow. I sure hope the wind stays away. Snow surfaces were impressively good, even in the alpine after yesterday’s increased winds. A little thicker than a few days ago, but still lovely. I pushed through several thick wind-loaded pillows on steep SE test slopes at around 10,700ft, and a couple of other locations. Couldn’t get anything to budge. Wind slabs felt stubborn.

Date of Observation: 01/18/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Climbed up the NE face of Snodgrass to the top of “Abbey Lane”, then gained the ridge to the top of “Fourth Bowl”. We dug the snowpit there, then skied down to Gothic road.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: No avalanches. Minor sluffing of the most recent storm snow, between 2 and 5″, during skinning.

Weather: Overcast with some sunshine peeking through.

Snowpack: 210cm deep snowpack downslope of a large tree at the top of 4th bowl. See attached image.
Performed a compression test and observed no failure, although snow only compressed until the layer at 150cm.

Date of Observation: 01/18/2023
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: AMR tour. N-NE-E. 10,000ft to 11,500ft

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Small wind slab above Kebler Pass Rd. The wind-protected steep pitches on East Bowl where we skied, clearly had old storm slabs that had run through the terrain and disrupted the snow surface but would have been small in size.

Weather: NW flow had the final kick. Moderate snowfall throughout the day. Irwin recorded 5″ of new snow. Poor visibility and blizzard-like conditions at times as snowfall combined with strong winds and blowing snow. Obscured sky through the day as the sun tried to poke through, but the orographic cloud was in the way.

Snowpack: Every day is crazy deep. Abnormal conditions and something we are not used to. We skied steep slopes to around 40 degrees and primarily managed the terrain for wind slabs. We chose not to ski Big Chute due to the continuous cross-loading it was seeing. The top of Rock Chute had a thicker slab, again from cross-loading and we chose to simply steer around it. Where we dropped into East Bowl, we primarily encountered small sluffs, until we got down to the lower more open areas, where there were notable thick cross-loaded pillows. Other areas of East Bowl are of course heavily wind-loaded from the top.

Stopped by Surface Hoar Meadow, north aspect at 10,550. HS 275. The 1/12 interface was down 70cm. 4 to 5mm SH at this location, below F hard snow. An ECT produced a hard result on a different SH layer down 110cm in 1F snow. No obvious signs of instability traveling through that area.

Date of Observation: 01/18/2023
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains

Weather: Only scattered light snow yesterday and last night with 3½” new and water 0.29″. Cloudy with light wind that gusted at times but little snow transport, then cooling overnight down to 8F and currently 12 after a high of 29 for only a brief time. Currently cloudy with a light wind though occasional gusts to 10, but it is not snowing. Snowpack dropped from 71″ to 67½” as the new snow is setting up, but with a ways to go.

Date of Observation: 01/17/2023
Name: Rob Strickland

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: RLG skinner maintenance…

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Small slabs (4”) naturally released on East facing side of the bowl near the tree line, as seen from the windy ridge.
Only small point releases from tree bombs and stomping cornices just past the windy ridge. So I was surprised to see the slabs above there.

Weather: Snowy, low vis

Date of Observation: 01/17/2023
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snodgrass. 9,500-11,100ft. NE-E

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Skier triggered and natural loose snow avalanches or sluffs in steep terrain. All small in size, and interestingly not accumulating much mass even on 40-degree slopes. Numerous storm slabs that had released at various times throughout the last couple of storms. Some to D1.5 in size. The most recent activity from last night maybe was all small D1.

I talked with another skier that dropped into a portion of California Bowl. This is a steep NE slope around 10,600ft. While skiing in an old bed surface they said they triggered a soft slab avalanche about 1.5ft deep. They said the resulting avalanche was small in size and they didn’t notice it had released until finishing the line.

Weather: Between 11am and 1:30pm the snowfall was generally light. There was a break in snowfall from around 1:30pm to 3pm. Snowfall rates seemed higher in the morning and later afternoon when I wasn’t out. Calm wind.

Snowpack: A few storm interfaces could be found in the upper 45-50cm of the snowpack with shovel tilt tests and some small column tests. Nothing would propagate in an ECT. Skied steep slopes in the upper 30-degree range to around 40-degree range with only small sluffs. Some of those slopes had previously avalanched and had a couple of feet of snow back in those bed surfaces, and others had the full seasons snowpack. Of course, no obvious signs of instability regarding the PSa problem while traveling through that terrain.

I didn’t find any SH at the ~1/14 interface higher in the terrain. I was able to find that SH down low near Gothic Road on a NE aspect at 10,500ft. That SH was small, surrounded by soft fist-hard snow, and produced an ECTN result.

I only made observations in the upper snowpack. In general, the upper snowpack looked good thanks to the relatively warm temperatures and fairly continuous snow. I suspect the storm slab avalanche problem has primarily been reactive during brief windows of peak precipitation rates.