Date of Observation: 03/14/2022
Name: Zach Kinler and Ben Pritchett

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Kebler Pass trailhead to Elk Creek

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: Site visit to document the recent rider-triggered avalanche, no new avalanches observed
Weather: Sunny and warm, finally felt like March. Calm winds below tree line and abundant sunshine with temps near to above freezing.
Snowpack: At the site of a recent large rider-triggered avalanche, the crown was 2-3 ft deep, it propagated around 150 ft wide and ran around 400 ft to the creek. A few inches of overnight snow are sitting on a thin melt-freeze crust from Saturday’s warming. It appears the avalanche failed on the 3/5 interface and stepped down to the Mid-February “sandbox” layer. The 3/5 interface is a soft melt-freeze crust with pit tests failing on small facets above the crust. A 50 cm soft slab(Fist to 4 Finger hard) is resting on this interface at this location. Failure occurred on this layer first, before the deeper, mid-February layer buried around 80 cm. While part of this slope likely avalanched early during the late February cycle, the slab/weak layer combo was obviously left mostly intact with the 3/5 interface forming during a dry spell before the last couple of storms.

Date of Observation: 03/14/2022
Name: Benjamin Schmatz

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: In the Gothic Townsite

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: 8/8 sunny warm

Snowpack: Reactive Layer found 55cm from the snow surface at the interface between the christmas storm and the long dry spell. No surprise there.
Melting precipitation particles near surface. Boot pen was 42 cm. Snowpack still mostly dry apart from some melt freeze crusts that have formed in February.

The proximity of the weak layer to the boot pen depth is concerning.

Date of Observation: 03/13/2022

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: NE Aspect @10,400ft

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Human Triggered Slab Avalanche, NE Aspect, at 10,400ft, ran 400 vertical feet (estimated), 170-200 feet wide (estimated), crown 18-24 in (estimated)

Date of Observation: 03/13/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Mt. CB and Friends Hut area

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A handful of recent avalanches submitted to CBAC via social media and CAIC database, coded below.

Date of Observation: 03/13/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snowmobiled on various aspects to the headwaters of Cement Creek, up to 12,000 ft.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: More small wet loose activity today at all elevations, southern half of the compass. A few fresh cornice falls on Double Top to D1.5. A handful of small to large wind slabs that probably ran Friday above treeline. One deeper and fresher looking slab avalanche on a SE facing slope above treeline on Gothic Peak that ran sometime in the past few days.
Weather: Warm and sunny most of the day. Clouds quickly increased to overcast from 3 to 4 p.m. Moderate ridgetop winds this afternoon were starting to drift snow.
Snowpack: Still getting fairly consistent shooting cracks and remotely triggered mini slabs in creek beds below treeline on untrammeled shady aspects. Signs of instability diminished as I got higher in elevation, although I did get easy propagating results under a 2 foot slab on the Double Top Ridgeline (NE aspect, 11,600′). These instabilities are all on the sandbox layer, 18″ to 24″ deep, on average fist to fist+ hard and 2mm in size. Tried snowmobile cutting several hard wind slabs above treeline on small, supported features and the only result was me getting bucked off the sled.

Date of Observation: 03/12/2022
Name: Irwin Guides

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Irwin Tenure: Upper Upper West Wall

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: These were largely unreactive to ski cuts but reactive to AE, most failing on the suncrust beneath this last storm cycle.
Field of Screams HS-AE-R1-D1.5-O FC (30cm x 30m x 200m)
Castle Valley Left HS-AB-R1-D1-O FC (70cm x 10m x 100m)
Castle Valley Right HS-ASc-R1-D1-O FC (20cm x 10m x 220m) ski cut at the top.

Date of Observation: 03/12/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Snowmobiled out to union park

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: East side of park cone

Date of Observation: 03/12/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Whetstone

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Add these to your collection

Date of Observation: 03/12/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate, traveled on easterly facing terrain to 11,600 ft.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: One very large (D3) persistent slab ran off of the east face of Peeler Peak today. Another large persistent slab ran below Scarp Ridge sometime last night or yesterday afternoon.
Spotted a handful of wind slabs that ran yesterday at higher elevations, D1 to D2, on SW to SE aspects.
A handful of small wet loose avalanches ran today near and below treeline. Observed slides on east to south aspects, sun was moving towards westerlies as my field day ended.
Weather: Mild temps, few clouds, light breeze with no transport observed all day.
Snowpack: Northwest winds affected the snow surface at all elevations here, with lots of soft sastrugi and obvious lobes of drifted slabs at all elevations. I was able to produce shooting cracks on some below treeline drifts where the slabs were thinner and softer. Near ridgetop, the slabs were meaty and dense and more stubborn. The persistent slab is about 3 to 4 feet thick here and evolving into a hard slab. Although we did not get any signs of instability on skis all day, we got one collapse while digging out a stuck sled. A quick test on a NE aspect at 11,000 ft produced propagating results on the dry spell layer after modifying the ECT into a “deep tap ECT”. No results under normal loading steps (ECTX). The layer is 4F- hard, 1mm in size under a 115 cm slab up to 1F hard.

Date of Observation: 03/12/2022
Name: Brad Wagner

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: East out of Ohio Creek winter trailhead toward the lower portions of Carbon

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: 30 degrees, full sun, light and variable wind
Snowpack: wind buffed and drifted on lower slopes. Started tour at 8800 feet and approached a scree field and started to go up on the scree field. measurements of the slope were between 12-18 degrees and there were many (more than four) instances of collapsing and “whoompfs”. We got to 9200 feet, felt one more collapse, turned tail and headed back to the vehicle.