Avalanches:
Weather: Overcast with snow beginning around 09:00 but remained very light through the am hours, picked
up a little in the pm and started nuking around 16:00. Winds were SSW 20’s gusts to 42 mph. High
temps were 22F/14F. FX: 6-9” tonight, 2-4” tomorrow, 0-1” tomorrow Night, 0-1” Tuesday. Clearing
Tuesday afternoon with a couple clear warm days and then the next uncertain storm for Friday &
Saturday.
Snowpack: Well-settled and stable Snowpack. Crusts widespread on southerly aspects and west is dry. Ski Pen
20cm’s and no signs of instability. New interface is Jan 24th Interface. Some NSF’s (1-1.5mm) at this
interface but not very widespread or too large. Southerlies have crusty surface, some smooth crusts
and some with some tracks and natural roller balls.

Avalanches: No cracking, whumping, or collapsing on skin track or on ski down.
Weather: Mixed bag of weather:
At Trailhead, S2 snowfall but snow stopped very quickly. Mostly cloudy at the rollers with intermittent periods of S-1 to S1. One 15 minute period of light winds with no wind transport. On hike out along Slate River, again hit a short spell of S1 with snow falling sideways. Snow on ground was not being transported.
Snowpack: Appeared to be less than 1cm of graupel on entire skin track leading from Poverty Gulch Bridge to top of rollers. Ski pole test showed up to 105 cm of snow from last weeks storms.

Avalanches:
Weather: Few clouds through most of the day, increasing in the afternoon around 3pm. Calm wind. 39F air temp at 10,700ft at 2pm.
Snowpack: -5cm moist snow forming a new MFcr crust on all sunny slopes traveled, generally steeper then 25-30 degrees. SH was being melted back by todays sun, on isolated to the lower elevation valleys. Shaded easterly slopes felt faceted on the surface, or a completely weak snowpack on steeper slopes that avalanched back in Christmas.

Each group felt a collapse approaching pit location on SE slopes. At 10,700, SE aspect, 25 degrees, HS 80cm, ECTPM SC X2 down 30cm on the 1/14 interface. Crust over thicker facet layer transitioning into the decaying Christmas Slab. Didn’t travel much on this aspect in avalanche terrain, so these pits where the only observations gathered for this aspect.

Avalanches: A few 4 foot cracking associated with skin track, but nothing else.
Slides from the recent storm cycle. On bottom of north ridge, for example: HS-N-R4-D2 on a short 75 foot slope. Saw other recent slides in the area. Saw debris in Wolverine but didn’t see the start zone from the ridge line.
Weather: Mostly sunny. Calm
Snowpack: Up to 16 inches of settled snow from recent snowfall this week (last snow was Wednesday). Faceted snow on lower 800 feet down to cross country groomed track. Surface facets less than 1 cm forming throughout snowpack up to the north ridge of Mt. Emmons.

Avalanches:
Weather: Calm to light NW, Intense Solar, cold in shade
Snowpack: No signs of instability even with 5 people tromping along together. Skied slopes up to 35*
SW, 31*, 10,240ft 2 pits 50 m apart
HS 100cm
ECTP15 @ 36cm in both pits. crust-facet-crust combo. Same layer & results as yesterdays pits on S aspect @ 10,200 on snodgrass.
Storm snow well bonded to crust that became moist & thick

NE 40* 5 people stomping through a road cut & punching through the full snowpack depth of 100cm @ 9,600 with no results. storm snow ~30cm from last couple days well bonded to facets forming the midpack. 3-4mm depth hoar at bottom.

Avalanches: Natural soft slabs in Evans Basin (D1.5, SE aspect ATL). Ruby Peak (D2, SE aspect ATL and D1, S aspect ATL), Axtell (D1, NE aspect NTL), and Purple Peak (D2.5, S to SE aspect ATL). Most looked like wind slabs failing on or above yesterday’s storm interface. The slide on Purple probably failed on the Jan 14th crust/facet layer as a persistent slab. The larger slide on Ruby is tough to say.
Weather: Large plumes off of peaks this morning from northerly winds. Clear skies. Cold temps.
Snowpack: In Crested Butte Area: below treeline, shaded aspects, the Jan 14th facet layer remains unreactive in pits. The recent snow above it is the same hardness as the layer, both F+. We did encounter some denser, slabbier snow on open pitches that got hit by northerly winds. No signs of instability on steep terrain.

Ruby

Evans Basin