Date of Observation: 11/23/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Baldy, E and NE aspects N/BTL

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: We ski triggered a couple of slow-moving facet sluffs that entrained the top 6” of facets on a sheltered, near treeline slope.
Weather: Winds and clouds started increasing around noon. No real snow transport, just some facets rolling and bouncing along the snow surface.
Snowpack: Got one crack in a small hard drift that propagated about 6 feet. Snow surfaces varied from hard drifts to wind crusts to sastrugi to cohesionless ~2 mm facets.

Date of Observation: 11/22/2022
Name: Zach Guy and Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Skinned out to Carbonate Hill via Pearl Pass Road and returned the same route.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A small wet loose avalanche off of the SW side of Star Peak, probably ran yesterday.
Weather: Mild temps, some high thin clouds at times. Light winds
Snowpack: Observed one alarmingly loud collapse on a cross-drifted terrain feature on Carbonate Hill, on a SW aspect ATL. The slab was thin but hard. The loading pattern from last week’s winds appears to have blown snow off of all aspects near ridgeline start zones and deposited into concave catchments lower on slopes. Surfaces are wind-affected, hard, and variable above treeline, often with weak facets below hard wind crusts. Below treeline the snowpack is 8″ or less of cohesionless facets, ~2mm. Let’s just say the ski quality out there is sub-par.

Date of Observation: 11/10/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Purple Ridge, traveled on E, NE, and N aspects to 12,300′

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Some minor dry loose avalanches triggered by solar warming yesterday and today off of steep, rocky terrain features.
Weather: Clear, light ridgetop winds, temperatures rebounding.
Snowpack: Went hunting for feedback from our wind slab problem. There were only a few features of concern that I could safely approach and stomp around on, and I got minimal cracking. In contrast, these same types of features were more reactive late last week.
Otherwise, most terrain has soft snow that continues to facet and weaken. It’s becoming unsupportive below treeline and on shallower, rocky areas near treeline.

Date of Observation: 11/19/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: 9,800-12,500. Primarily SE aspects with a couple of variations to NE and E. Augusta.

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: Clear and Calm.

Snowpack: The moderate to strong winds from this past week sure has redistributed the snow and affected the snow surface. Surprisingly the snow was still skiing great, even in some areas where the snow surface didn’t look good from afar. We didn’t encounter any wind slab issues off the SE summit of Augusta. While the NE face had some thick drifts from recent cross-loading and looked problematic. We encountered another cross-loaded terrain feature lower down that also looked concerning. This feature again had a big fetch going into a NE aspect. There was a clear area where ski pen went from say 15cm in depth, to 1cm in depth, and back. All stacked on a weak-faceted snowpack. All in all, managing for wind slabs was the primary avalanche problem we encountered. Those wind loading patterns looked variable and that pattern wasn’t easy to describe in one particular way. There was also the slightest dusting of new snow that must have fallen on Friday and it was making it more difficult to identify some areas of harder wind slabs or wind board.

Snow surfaces stayed cold on SE slopes throughout the day.

Date of Observation: 11/18/2022
Name: Zach Guy Zach Kinler

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper East River, Nirvana Bowl on Baldy

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed a D1.5 Wind Slab that likely ran yesterday or overnight. Ski-triggered another Wind Slab from ridgeline adjacent to the natural. This one propagated a bit wider and reached D2 size entraining the softer snow in wind-protected terrain as it ran around 600 ft. Debris was up to 5 ft deep.
Weather: Partly Cloudy, felt like January, light NW winds with moderate gusts.
Snowpack: We traveled primarily on S and SE aspects near and above treeline. 4-5 inches of low-density, faceting snow is resting on crusts from earlier in November.  As we gained elevation towards the ridge a thin wind crust was present on the surface. Closer to the ridge the wind crust grew to an obviously thicker slab up to 18″ thick. Northerly winds caused off-and-on snow transport onto southerly aspects.

Date of Observation: 11/22/2022
Name: Jack Caprio

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: South Fork Crystal River. Traveled on S, SE, and N aspects up to 12,500’

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: 2 small skier triggered wind slabs. 1 was about 5-8” deep, and traveled about 250’. The other was about 3-4 inches deep, and traveled about 100’.

Weather: Cold and clear. Light winds with moderate gusts out of the west.

Snowpack: In the terrain we traveled, the wind slabs were reactive in north facing terrain. We encountered wind slabs of similar size and hardness on S and SE facing terrain and they seemed to be much more stubborn.

Date of Observation: 11/15/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Mt. Baldy, traveled on E to N aspects to 11,900′

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Intentionally ski triggered a pair of small slab avalanches on an east facing, cross drifted ridge near treeline. The slabs were up to 12″ thick, ~25 ft wide, 4F+ on average. One previous natural on a NE aspect, likely from last week. All small in size.
Weather: Too cold for my toes. Light breeze, no snow transport. Scattered cloud cover. An inch of snow in the past 24 hours.
Snowpack: Found ourselves on a particularly chatty east facing slope that produced numerous collapses and shooting cracks ranging from 10 to 50 feet, failing on a thin, faceted crust (Nov 3). Once we got to a ridge where it was more drifted, we popped a couple of slabs by collapsing the slope while skinning. No other signs of instability on other slopes.

Date of Observation: 11/15/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate. E to NE, 9,700 to 12,000ft.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Several small sluffs or possibly a couple very small wind slabs above treeline.

Weather: Partly cloudy ski in the morning becoming mostly cloudy early afternoon. Calm to light winds and cold temps.

Snowpack: Around an inch of very low-density new snow for the most part, becoming a few inches of new snow above 11,000ft. A little bit of fresh drifting above treeline on the most wind-exposed terrain. Pushed one very small wind slab that was isolated to right at the ridgeline.

The old hard slabs that are hiding out on some previously wind-loaded terrain features didn’t show any obvious signs of instability today, or this past Sunday. In general, as the snowpack continues to weaken with the cold weather, the interface between those old slabs and the facets below continues to become less pronounced. Both the grain size and hardness are often changing gradually between the layers of snow vs abruptly like when that avalanche problem was fresh.

The skiing is still surprisingly good in some areas.

Date of Observation: 11/13/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Working on a weather station on Carbonate Hill, descended Timbered Hill to Death Pass, traveling mostly on south to west aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A small natural windslab on Carbonate from last storm. D1.
Weather: Light winds, clouds streaming in from the south. Ridgetop temp in the 20’s.
Snowpack: Fairly continuous coverage across all aspects at higher elevations, with the deepest/most continuous coverage on north to east facing terrain. Mid to low elevation southerlies are the only bare slopes at the moment. A couple of inches of recent snow was redistributed by winds above treeline and is now faceting over a variety of wind hardened surfaces. Near surface facets are more developed and more widespread as we descended in elevation; snowpack is generally faceted throughout below treeline, with one or two crusts on sunnier aspects. Snow depths are generally about 12″ to 18″ at 11,000′ and only a few inches at valley bottom.

Date of Observation: 11/12/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate, traveled on N, NE, and E aspects to 12,200’.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: None
Weather: High thin clouds, calm winds. Inverted temps this morning.
Snowpack: Not much to add onto yesterday’s obs. Snow surface is faceting quickly. We got several moderate sized collapses near treeline on previously cross-drifted east aspects. Got moderate propagating test results on similar NE facing slopes, 2’ deep on the 11/3 facet layer (see video). Also traveled through a lot of terrain that was lacking any kind of previous drifting or slab formation or signs of instability. We did get one collapse on an east facing, sheltered BTL slope, where a thin crust (11/3) helped propagate the collapse about a foot deep in an otherwise soft snowpack. I doubt this is an issue on sheltered slopes, but it highlights how collapsible that crust is.