I groom for the snowmobile club. I was coming down the east side of Spain’s today, heading north. There was a sizable slide across the trail. It’s been somewhat covered by fresh so I guess it’s a few days olds but it was a good 150′ wide and looks as if it slid form 200′ no idea how deep it was. It took a few 10″ trees with it.

Name: Donny Roth
Location: Snodgrass
Date of Observation: 12/27/2014
Aspect: East, South East
Elevation: 9500-10500

Weather: Few Clouds (mostly convective near high peaks), Calm winds, 4ºF @ 1200 & 10ºF @ 1500

Snowpack: Snow surface DFs going to facets, Ski Pen 10cm, Boot Pen 60cm; HS 70 to 100cm. Widespread, faint whumpfing on flats, no cracking, some noticeable collapsing. Snow cat triggered avalanche on road cut (D1) on 37º degree SE aspect. CTs and RBs produced clean, clear results (mostly CTMs and an RB3 and RB4 – this was a Level I avy course) on “Dec. 13th” interface, now about 50cm down from surface.

Avalanches: Let’s stay heads up. RLB got shredded and the ski quality is excellent right now. The new snow since Dec. 13 is pretty “right side up,” offering solid support while skiing. But that interface is shit. I think confidence levels will go up faster than the problem goes away. In my opinion, all north aspects and any slope with bigger consequences should be approached cautiously and conservatively.

Name: Jafar Tabaian
Title: Trees South of Coney’s
Date of Observation: 12/27/2014
Aspect: North East, East
Elevation: 10,500

Avalanches: @10,500 NE facing slope with 35-37 degree slope. This is below tree-line about 200ft below ridge, further south of the main coney’s area. Looked to be natural and fractured at the tree-line. Failed at 30cm (12in) on pre-christmas storm crust. Although the it failed relatively wide across the slope it did not step down to persistent slab and stopped on a bench about 100ft down slope. Low end of the destructive scale.

Weather: Clear, wind picking up through out the day on ridge top. Cold, -1 F. A lot of facets forming in the shade.

Snowpack: Skied a few laps on convex corner and fist bowl, no signs of instability while skiing. There was significant wind loading across the upper section of the slope. Did get a propagating crack on a steeper (~35 degree) NE wind loaded aspect, but nothing moved.

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Coneys-Slide

Date: 12/27/14
Location: Red Lady Bowl (along with the rest of town)
Elevation: 9,000-12,400ft
Aspect: S/SE

Weather: COLD !!! -10F at TH at 0830. 11F back at TH at 1300. Slight inversion found up high, but felt minimal. Clear, except for cold air induced clouds clinging to summits on North faces. Light intermittent winds out of NE.

Snowpack & Avalanche Obs Surface snow was remaining dry on S/SE aspects and no evidence of yesterday’s thin melt-freeze crust was noticed as of 1230. Surface faceting already beginning to happen due to cold temps. Xmas storm slab seemed a bit stiffer today then yesterday but still dry and low density on top. Noticeable and wide spread settlement cones seen on skin up through the forest. Also saw evidence of a few old natural slides low in Redwell Basin on steep S/SE aspects, running on Dec 13th interface it seemed. Some slight cracking in wind stiffened snow at ridge top, but no other instabilities found. Supportive ‘mid-pack’ seems to begin to disappear around 11,000′ on down to 9,000′ on shadier, colder aspects.

Name: Zach Guy and Evan Ross
Title: Mt. Owen avalanche
Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 12/27/2014
Aspect: North East, East
Elevation: 12,900 feet.

Avalanches: Checked out the avalanche on Mt. Owen that occurred around 12/22. It looks like there were 3 sympathetic slides (probably not connected), each about 600 feet wide, the largest of them running 1900 vertical feet into Robinson Basin. The crown was generally 100 to 150 cm deep, failed on December 13th facet layer, which was generally about 80 cm above the ground, except for the shallow rocky areas, where the layer was close to the ground (

Weather: Arctic cold!! Calm winds in the bowl, light snow transport off of the ridgetop. Few clouds.

Snowpack: 6 to 10″ of fresh snow from Christmas storm, over denser, wind stiffened surface left at the end of the Solstice storm. Minimal signs of instability in this new snow; just a few very thin and narrow slab releases and a handful of loose snow avalanches.

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Name: ADB
Location: Gothic Road
Date of Observation: 12/27/2014
Aspect: North East, South East, West
Elevation: ATL, BTL, TL

Avalanches: Gothic Mountain: Observed loose snow slides on SE aspects emanating below all cliff bands. These slides occurred prior to last snowfall. Danger scale up to D2.
East of Gothic Townsite, observed one natural slab avalanche, that appeared to be an R2 on a west face ATL. . Could have occurred during last snow cycle. Too far to determine if it was hard or soft slab.
BTL on Snodgrass on east facing slope, observed one area with rollers.

Weather: Cold in the morning. Mostly sunny and no wind.

Name: ADB
Location: Coney’s
Date of Observation: 12/26/2014
Aspect: North East
Elevation: 9,600 to 10,600

Avalanches: Tested a short slope along the valley bottom on a convexity with slope around 30 degrees. No cracking or whomping resulted There were no signs of instability on the skin track to the ridge either. We observed a coyote cross the entire bowl, about 400 feet below the ridgeline and no avalanches resulted.

Observed natural loose slides along most of the Schuchyll ridgeline.. These slides emanated at cliff bands and were observed on east to southeast aspects. Appeared to be D2’s. Looked like they have occurred before the most recent snow.

Weather: Mostly cloudy with a slight breeze on the ridge. Visibility was excellent.

Snowpack: First ones in this area today. The skin track had less than 2 inches on it. Snow depths from recent accumulations (last 48 hours) ranged between 6 and 8 inches.

Name: Evan Ross
Location: Mt Emmons
Date of Observation: 12/26/2014
Aspect: South East, South
Elevation: 9,000 to 11,300

Weather: Mostly cloudy, a few S-1 snow squalls, calm wind at BTL and NTL elevations.

Snowpack: Enough solar today for a soft and thin sun crust to form on south slopes over 30 degrees. At 11, 300ft, HS 110, 12/13 interface was down 60cm. Sitting on top of that 12/13 sun crust interface was 10cm of F hard snow, likely NSF. Above this poor structure was the solstice storm and more recent storm events with a slab at its base of 1f to F at the surface. A very quick and singular test was CT14 RP on the NSF. No collapsing or other obvious signs to instability while traveling on these slopes up to 32 degrees. At 11,700ft and just above treeline on a SE ridge, there was no recent signs of wind transported snow in the last 24hr.

Name: Zach Guy
Title: Coney’s
Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 12/25/2014
Aspect: North East
Elevation: BTL/NTL

Avalanches: Observed 3 or 4 recent avalanches running on the facet layer on North or Northeast aspects below treeline. About a foot deep, failing full width of their small paths, but small in destructive size (D1 to 1.5’s).

Weather: Surprisingly calm winds. No snow transport observed off of high peaks. Generally broken skies. Periods of heavy snow (S3 +) with lulls between snow pulses. About 5 or 6″ of new snow accumulated through the day.

Snowpack: New snow fell very low density and unaffected by wind. About 12-18″ of recent soft slab (fist + to 4F) over the Dec 13th facet layer, which is basically a faceted conglomerate of all snow prior to Dec 13th to the ground. Lots of collapsing when traveling low angle terrain, and a NE facing slope fractured wall to wall but didn’t slide…just spiderweb cracks down to the facet layer.

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