Date of Observation: 03/08/2022
Name: Irwin Guides

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Irwin Tenure

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: E bowl anthracites observed what was most likely a natural WS from
Irwin in the AM D1 potentially?

E face Ruby/Owen ridge above green lake. There was a natural wind slab 100′
X 500 below the ridge observed in the AM, then sometime after 1400 it ran again failing higher on the slope.
2-3′ X 200′ X 800′ almost to green lake.
Weather:
Snowpack: 3″ of settlement since the storm ended. No signs of instability after testing the PS structure on the west wall.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 03/08/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Traveled on flat or east facing terrain to 11,400 ft. in West Brush Creek

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Good views of lots of terrain in West Brush up towards White Mtn, and I did not see any natural activity from this past storm. However, there were a handful of small soft slabs that ran recently near valley bottom near the confluence of Middle and West Brush Creek. One of them appeared to be remotely triggered today by a snowmobile. The rest ran naturally sometime in the past couple days on east and north aspects.
Weather: Mostly clear skies, calm winds where we traveled; occasional light drifting on high peaks like Teo. Cold day.
Snowpack: 12″ of settled storm snow in the Union Chutes area. We saw numerous shooting cracks while snowmobiling flat terrain in valley bottom, a couple of them shook willows or small tree branches. The most interesting one I triggered from across a creek; the failure must have crossed a snow bridge and collapsed the opposite slope (east facing). On skis, we produced two collapses on east facing slopes around 10,000 ft. Both collapses required some hard stomps to punch through the mid-slab crust first. Most of the steep terrain around here avalanched with the last cycle. The one bedsurface we traveled on did not appear to have enough slab to be problematic; it did not produce signs of instability on slope angles up to 40 degrees. I also tested a few south and west facing terrain features without any signs of instability.  Obvious signs of instability also waned as we climbed to near treeline elevations on E/NE, although the structure is clearly poor from pole probing.

Date of Observation: 03/08/2022
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Northwest Mountains & Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Pavement observations.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed a couple of fresh avalanches off Scarp Ridge, Axtel’s 5th Bowl, and a south-facing slope between Red Lady and Coon.

Date of Observation: 03/08/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Red Lady skintrack with 2 laps in the bowl.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A couple of very small windslabs just off the ridge around Gunsight Pass along with a little fresh (soft) debris in the bowl on S & SE aspects.
Weather: Bluebird & cold with a light wind shifting from NW to SW to W.
Snowpack: The new snow has consolidated a bit since Sunday but didn’t feel particularly slabby. No obvious signs of instability, even while breaking a new trail along the upper ridge below the summit.

Date of Observation: 03/08/2022
Name: Than Acuff

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Hwy 135

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Small persistent slab that looks like it ran naturally from yesterday afternoon’s winds.
Weather: Some blowing snow off of Whetstone this morning.
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 03/07/2022
Name: Than Acuff

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: BTL NE

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: Just some minimal sluffing up high on steep NE slopes
Weather: partly cloudy with periods of snow and some winds
Snowpack: 4-5″ new from day before. Snow getting stiffer, feeling a little shlabby out in open from the winds but still getting it in the face. Some shattering in surface of snow at top of rolls out in the open where the wind got to it

Date of Observation: 03/07/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Traveled on NE, E, SE, and S aspects of Schuylkill Ridge to 11,400 ft.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: I was hunting for signs that one of the dozens of bed surfaces on Schuylkill Ridge is reactivating. I stomped on and ski cut a handful of slopes that ran during the 2/23 cycle without anything interesting until I put in a ski cut above the ENE side of Birthday Bowl, which produced a D2 slab avalanche about 5 feet in front of my skis..maybe we can call that remotely triggered. The slab was about 100 feet wide, 20″ thick, and ran a few hundred feet shy of the bench. The snow structure there was soft snow from the recent storm over the bed surface from the last cycle, which is a soft melt-freeze crust capping facets. From where I triggered it, the slide failed on the facets.  However, as I traced the length of the crown, at some point it stepped up above the crust. So it failed on a combination of old snow and storm interface. I also spotted a small slab that failed midway down the Shield in Redwell Basin, breaking in the storm snow.
Weather: Light winds and very light snowfall this morning. Around 2 p.m., there was a stronger but brief pulse of moderate snowfall, followed by winds increasing out of the northwest. Snow was actively cross-drifting at lower elevations from down-valley winds, and I saw efficient transportation into Red Lady Bowl as I was leaving the trailhead.
Snowpack: 12″ to 18″ of storm snow. No obvious signs of instability underfoot while traveling on an established skin track and while occasionally jumping off the skin track fishing for collapses. I got some localized cracking in drifted features isolated to ridgetop and in a cross-drifted gulley near valley bottom.
On a due east aspect NTL where the entire persistent slab structure is intact, I got hard propagating results about 3 feet down. On due east aspects, the 3/5 crust was about 5 cm thick and 1F hard on steep slopes (see profile). On slopes that avalanched during the last cycle, tests produced failures below the storm snow that did not propagate on the weak facets left behind after the avalanches. The slope that avalanched had a similar structure as the latter ones I tested with ECTs.
On SE aspects, that same crust is very thick and supportive. The storm snow appeared to be bonding fairly well to that crust on southerly aspects; ski cuts on slopes up to 40 degrees only produced minor sluffing in the top few inches of snow.

Date of Observation: 03/05/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Hiking up NE slope between Meridian Lake and Washington Gulch Rd.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Friend triggered avalanche from below while hiking up the slope and was caught, getting partially buried.
Weather:
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 03/07/2022
Name: billy barr

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: Snow started in the evening going steady but light overnight with 5½” new and water 0.33″. Wind light from the southwest. Currently obscured with light snow and light SW wind. The temperature range the last 24 hours was a high of 31F and the low, and the current, of 10F. Snowpack is at winters deepest of 69″.
Snowpack: The snowpack is still collapsing but i saw no signs of avalanche activity.

Date of Observation: 03/06/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: 9,200-12,300 feet, SE aspect; standard route.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: Calm wind, mid to upper teens and overcast in the morning. By the afternoon, intermittant light snow and moderate SW wind.
Snowpack: A foot or so of super low density snow on a firm crust. No signs of instability, not even a little sluffing at the top. Occasionally, an edge would bump the underlying crust. Even with flat light, and at times low visibility, we spent the better part of the day lapping the bowl; floating on clouds of snow! A concern would be for the increasing winds to form fresh windslabs overnight.