Name: Alex Banas
Title:
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 01/02/2015
Aspect:
Elevation:

Avalanches: the bowl was tracked out almost wall to wall

Weather: Calm and balmy

Snowpack: Dug around red coon glades on a 32 degree SE aspect @11,500. shallow 80 cm snowpack with 16cm of DH below an interesting melt freeze faceted layer. CT19 Q1 @ 16 cm from the ground. ECTX. Skiing felt a bit punchy and the pack was warming up quickly throughout the early afternoon. Surface hoar was widespread on all aspects and elevations but the more solar aspets seemed to be burning off the hoar, the shady aspects were holding strong with larg hoar. Looking north towards S maroon pk I saw S, SE aspects flushing seemingly large, mostly on steep slopes with lots of rock features.

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Name: Ian Havlick
Title: Field Day near White Rock Mountain
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 01/02/2015
Aspect: North East, East, South East, South, South West, West
Elevation: 9500-11000

Avalanches: Definitely felt like considerable danger in the area we travelled today. Cracking, booming collapses, and recent activity on anything steeper than 35º was observed. Confident that if we travelled into steeper terrain, we would have produced size 1-2 avalanches.

Weather: clear, calm, cold. Not a breath of wind until around sunset, when plumes were observed off peaks near Schofield, and farther east toward Precarious and Castle Peaks.

Snowpack: Ventured into the more eastern forecast area near Brush creek to look at snowpack and get some eyes on the Snodgrass massif and some of the avalanche activity in that area from across the valley. Snow depths range from 50-150cm deep depending on elevation and aspect. Snowpack is quite weak, with 3mm dry depth hoar and facets through much of the snowpack, but slightly denser, stiffer snow overlies the Dec. 13th interface, creating that slab. Punchy and trap-doory while skiing up and down. Boot pen was to the ground, and ski pen varied from 10cm to full depth (~65cm). Felt several very large collapses while skiing on a variety of aspects. Many of which produced cracking on nearby rollovers and steeper slopes. 2 pits on different aspects and elevations produced propagating results where the slab was denser. ECTP17 SC and ECTP20 SC. The pit lower in elevation did not produce propagation, but failed at 14 taps at the december 13th interface, and 17 taps failed at the ground.

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Name: Zach Guy
Title: Irwin slides and surface hoar
Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 01/02/2015
Aspect: East, South, West
Elevation: 10,000-12,000 feet

Avalanches: 2 lb handshot initiated a persistent slab avalanche on a West aspect above treeline. Roughly 3 to 4 feet deep, ran ~1,000 feet. Mostly on Dec 13th interface. SS-AE-R4-D3-O. An airblast on a similar aspect produced a shallower slide, ~10″ deep that entrained enough snow to bury someone. SS-AB-R2-D2-U

Weather: Clear and calm all day.

Snowpack: Widespread surface hoar layer on all aspects and elevations. Needle-like, up to 3 or 4 mm at the higher elevations, decreased in size with decreasing elevation. A thin crust formed on steep southerly aspects.

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Name: Andrew schauer
Title: Small skier-triggered slide at Snodgrass
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 01/01/2015
Aspect: Northeast
Elevation: Not sure, about 2/3 of the way to the top

Avalanches: Small skier-triggered soft slab avalanche on NW aspect about a foot deep and +/- 25 ft wide. Ran about 500 ft. Slope failed on facets under previous storm’s snow. Minor signs of wind, but slab was 4 finger hardness, not super dense. Start zone was a convexity, about 35 degree slope. Nobody caught or buried.

Weather: Intermittent snow

Snowpack: From a pit lower down on a slightly more westerly aspect:
Depth about 75cm
No real signs of wind slabs, a few different layers with facets, especially deep in the snowpack.
ECTN15 about 10cm depth in new snow layer
ECTN28 about 30cm depth in thick facet layer
Both failures were Q3
CTN at same location
All failures were poor shear quality and showed no signs of “popping”, snowpack did not seem very reactive.

I did notice two old crowns in the area that were starting to get buried again. Probably from the last week.

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Name: Evan Ross
Title: Mount Emmons
Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 01/01/2015
Aspect: South East, South
Elevation: 9000-11,400

Weather: WEATHER: Few clouds becoming overcast and snowing by 10am. Snowing up to S2 at times with about 2″ of accumulation. Calm to light down valley winds.

Snowpack: SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Same same really. Could still feel a density change by probe of weaker snow on top of the 12/13 facets and below the solstice slab. Likely a thin layer of NSF that should be gaining strength. On a south slope at treeline this interface was still noticeable in a pit wall but was considerably stronger then a pit dug on 12/26, same aspect, and about 500ft lower in elevation.

On a cross loaded slope just above the parking lot 2″ windslabs where cracking.

Name: Gary Dotzler
Title: Small Avalanche on Snodgrass
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 01/01/2015
Aspect: North East
Elevation: 9600

Avalanches: Small sympathetic release following a whoomf. Small rollover on Snodgrass near saddle at 9600 ft. See pic below.

Weather: Snowing

Snowpack: Started skin track 1 mile south of Gothic, near cabins on west side of road. Immediately heard whoomfing about every 3-5 minutes of travel. Had only climb 300 feet when one whoomf set off a sympathetic release on roll over 70 yards away. Looked to be a 2ft crown at it deepest. Picture attached. Was about 50 yards wide. that coupled with the whoomfing was enough for us to turn around and call it a day.

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Name: ADB
Title: Mt. Emmons
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 01/01/2015
Aspect: South

Avalanches: Due to very low visibility, NA.

Weather: Happy New year. Tour began under mostly sunny skies with clouds moving in from southwest (Mt Axtell). Skies quickly transitioned to mostly cloudy then continuous snowfall. No wind was associated with this front, as there was no wind on the summit ridge or south ridge of Mt. Emmons. The skin track on south ridge had approximately 0.5 inches of new snow. Snow fall rates were less than 1 inch/hour and continuous

Snowpack: While sun was out, observed surface hoar formation in open areas, as I did yesterday on Snodgrass (no obs). ATL-2 to 4 inches of wintry snow. BTL/NTL-4 to 8 inches of wintery snow with infrequent pockets of sun crust.

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Name: Jake Jones
Title: North and South Near Town
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 01/01/2015
Aspect: North, North East, South, South West
Elevation: 10,500

Avalanches: No signs of instability on or off the skin track or while making turns.

Weather: Light snow and calm wind early on New Years day.

Snowpack: The most southerly aspects in the Slate River valley are showing the first signs of surface crusts. Those crusts were getting buried by the couple inches of snow that fell today. Northerly aspects in the Washington Gulch valley are growing surface hoar and near surface facets. Overall the snowpack is really supportive on both ends of the compass rose with deeper ski pen on the north. Didn’t travel on slopes steeper than 30 degrees.