Date of Observation: 01/24/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Rode on northerly aspects of East and West Beckwith to about 11,300′

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Noted 3 shallow soft slabs that ran naturally above treeline sometime in the past few days, D1 in size. Added a couple more previously undocumented old slides from the 12/31 cycle on West Beckwith. I explored the damage from the largest slide on West Beckwith. The crown in the main bowl was about 2,200 ft wide. It’s difficult to tell if it connected or sympathetically released another slide in the adjacent bowl, which would add another 1,500 ft in width. The slide in the main bowl ran about 3,800 feet downhill. It widened the trim line on either side of the track and wiped out about 2+ acres of mature forest at the toe of the debris. I measured the alpha angle at 19 degrees on my phone’s inclinometer, and calculated 18 degrees on Google Earth.
Weather: Clear skies this morning increased to overcast this afternoon. Light winds.
Snowpack: I found 2-3 mm surface hoar growth from below treeline to my high point at 11,300 ft. There’s been enough recent wind effect in this area to reduce the threat of sluffs near and above treeline and replace it with small wind slab potential. I sniffed around a bit for wind slabs and got one rollover near treeline to produce 10 foot cracking about 10 inches deep on the 1/21 facet layer. No other signs of instability. The snowpack gets shallower the further west in the range you go. Near the western end of West Beckwith, snow depth at 10,000 ft is 1 meter. The slab there is faceting away and becoming unsupportive to boot pen.

Date of Observation: 01/24/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from near Lost Lake

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A handful of previously undocumented deep slabs on East Beckwith, likely from the 12/31 cycle.

Date of Observation: 01/23/2022
Name: Ben Preston

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Near Gothic townsite

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: See photos of debris and damage from the deep slab that ran off of the east face of Gothic around New Year’s Eve.

Date of Observation: 01/23/2022
Name: Peter Horgan

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: We descended one of the chutes above Green Lake on the far looker’s left side of Axtel. Refer to the picture attached here.

Aspect: NNW
Elevation: ~11,500
Slope angle: ~45 degrees

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: No avalanches were observed. Given the current awareness/concern around sluff, I wanted to report that we did not have any sluffing at this location.
Snowpack: The snowpack was measured at 235cm near the bottom of the chute.

Date of Observation: 01/23/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Slate River Trailhead

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Skier triggered sluffs in Climax Chutes

Date of Observation: 01/24/2022
Name: Frank Stern

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Emmons and Climax areas, 9,000 to 11,000

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Loose snow N facing in easternmost Climax chute 10,000′, D1, looks like natural release, 2 further east natural, Wolverine Basin 11,500′ east facing
Weather: Sunny and calm
Snowpack: Solid

Date of Observation: 01/23/2022

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: 8,700-11,300 feet; SE, E & NE aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: D1 loose wet avalanche on a rocky, east-facing slope. Picture is not the best, but looker’s left side of the start zone.
Weather: Single digits in the morning, warming into the 20s later in the day. Sunny and clear. Steady WNW wind was loading leeward slopes ATL.
Snowpack: Pole probing throughout the tour revealed an HS of 100-120cm. 5-10cm of new snow. Sheltered (BTL) NE terrain skied well. E & SE terrain exhibited varying levels of crusty-ness.

Date of Observation: 01/23/2022
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic Mountain from Washington Gulch. Traveled on south through west aspects to 12,600 ft.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Skier triggered a shallow wet-ish loose sluff that ran about 900 vertical feet down a steep SW facing chute, small in size, but large enough to take you for a ride. There was a small natural loose dry that ran yesterday from an adjacent slope.
Weather: Gorgeous sunny day. Inverted temps. Light ridgetop winds, no snow transport observed anywhere in the zone.
Snowpack: Storm snow has settled to 2″ or 3″. We found isolated drifts up to 15″ thick along the summit ridge of Gothic from previous east winds blowing up the face. The drifts formed on rocks on west-facing terrain, so they weren’t a hazard here.
Further January weak layer documentation: The facets on south aspects are capped by a thick, stout crust with occasional percolation columns into the weak layer. There are small radiation recrystallization facets on the surface; I suspect they got cooked today? Westerly aspects look similar to east aspects from yesterday but with thinner or non-existent wind crusts capping the facets. Tested for deeper instabilities in a shallow west-facing slope and got unreactive results, although the basal weak layer was embedded in talus and not continuous across the pit.

Date of Observation: 01/22/2022
Name: Eric Murrow Ben Prichett

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek to Flag Creek to Spring Creek to Taylor River Rd to Upper Taylor and back into Cement Creek. A good portion of this route was just outside the CBAC forecast area to the east.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Observed evidence of several unreported D3 avalanches from the major cycle at the end of December in Upper Taylor drainage, and one fresh Wind Slab avalanche on the north slopes of Mount Tilton, D1.5.
Weather: Clear skies and light to calm winds below treeline. Generally 1 to 3 inches of new snow from Friday’s small storm, with around 6 inches in the localized area near Upper Taylor Creek.
Snowpack: We measured snow depths in numerous places on this long snowmobile tour: 135cm in middle Cement Creek at 10,000′, 175cm in the headwaters of Cement Creek at 11,500′ near Hunter Creek, 110 cm near Spring Creek Reservoir at 9,900′, 135cm near the head of Spring Creek, and 90cm at the junction of Taylor Road and Taylor Pass Rd at 10,000′.

Date of Observation: 01/22/2022
Name: Andrew Breibart

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Red lady skin track to gunsight pass to Redwell to Wrong Chute to the OBJ CG

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: sloughs on scarp ridge-NE aspect ATL (see pictures)

Weather: calm, clear, and warm in the sun.

Snowpack: 2 inches of new snow within past 24 hours on south side on Mt Emmons. New snow lays on top of slick melt freeze crust. 6 to 8 inches of new snow within past 24 hours on the north side. Ski pen on the north side is mostly 4 to 5 inches and soft under foot. While skiing wrong chute, we released fast moving sluffs below the road in steeper terrrain. We observed sluffs along Scarp Ridge which occurred within the past 24 hours (see pictures).