Avalanches: Explosive triggered D1.5’s out of Lone Wolf & Ski Heroes 20-50cm crowns. A few small D1s in Field of Screams. UUWW slides explosive triggered with 9# airblasts.
Natural D2 on South Ruby face
Weather: Partly Cloudy with winds picking up throughout the day SW 30’s/G-50’s. Intense wind transport. High Temps: 31F@10K and 19F@12K.
Snowpack: Persistent Slab Un-reactive in UUWW. Top 20-50cms reactive to Air Blasts in UUWW, pryed out borderline hard slab, wind drifted lenses. UUWW very variable with 10-20cm’s of facets to 130cm 1-Finger hard slab on the same slope. Slab formations mostly discontinuous with a lot of wind pasted whales in between runs by tree fences.

Avalanches: A number of wind and/or storm slabs that released naturally during the Christmas cycle. The largest was a wind loaded storm slab. Definitely broke as a windslab and propagated further down slope into a storm slab, good stuff. ooo gets better, the debris triggered multiple small windslabs near the valley bottom. Windloaded storm slab that triggered multiple smaller windslabs or as coding would say, SS-N-R3-D2-S.
Weather: Clear sky with clouds starting to stream in, in the later afternoon. Calm winds in the valley with some moderate westerly gusts at ridegline.
Snowpack: Same same as this previous obs, just more snow and some wind effect. No obvious or observed sings to instability on supported slopes up to 38 degrees. Defiantly wind loading below ridgelines from our previous storm. Easy to just simply avoid so no more details.

The great wide open on Schuylkill. Small windslabs down low, bigger slabs in the start zone that are difficult to see in this picture.

It back. The glide cracks near the head of the Slate River Drainage.

Avalanches: Skier triggered a couple of harmless soft slabs each day, ~6-8″ deep on slightly wind affected below treeline slopes, various aspects. SS-AS-R1-D1-S. Lots of natural and skier triggered, shallow sluffing on various aspects.  L-AS/N-R1-D1-S
One natural D2.5 persistent slab ran during the storm, on a NNW aspect ATL. Crown looked about 3 to 5 feet deep and ran on or near the ground. HS-N-R3-D2.5-O/G
Weather: 12/25. S2 most of the day. Moderate NW winds with extreme gusts and intense snow transport. Overcast. -12C in the a.m.
12/26. Overcast decreased to clear. S-1 in the a.m. Very cold temps. Calm to light winds, minimal transport.
Snowpack: Christmas storm total was about 12″-14″, right-side-up. Snow depth in a wind sheltered flat slope was 145 cm. Ski pen was knee deep below treeline and ankle deep or less above treeline, where snow surfaces were stiffened by the wind. Stayed below treeline on 12/25 and saw no signs of instability except the avalanches described above. On 12/26, stomped on a number of suspect windloaded ridges N/ATL and couldn’t get anything to budge. No signs of instability observed other than the avalanches described above and some minor cracking in spots.

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Avalanches:
Weather: Overcast in AM to clear skies in PM, no new precip; light to moderate down valley wind in morning, calm in PM; cold, high recorded temp of -11ºC @ 10,000’ @ 13:00.
Snowpack: Ski pen of 10cm to 20cm for most of the day; upper 20cm to 40cm of the snowpack was a 4F wind slab. Compression tests and hand shears produced easy results, but an ECT didn’t propagate across the column. The upper part of the pack felt great under foot while touring, but you could feel the inconsistencies on the descent. We got one, short, shooting crack on a 32º slope, but otherwise so no obvious signs of instabilities. The interface between the new wind slab and the buried near surface facets was clear. With the cold temps, the surface of the snow appeared to be faceting in the late afternoon. I think this will heal this week, but it needs a couple days. (IMO).

Avalanches: D1’s with ski cuts on everything steeper than 35 degrees failing 10-20cm’s deep on a storm instability, a couple small remote triggers. Paperboy route produced numerous size 1 storm slabs.
Weather: Obscured skies, Snowing S1, strong winds w/ extreme gusts from the WSW, High Gust 74mph. High temp 11F in the study plot 3F at Ridge Top. HST 12″ with 1.2″ SWE at 4pm. H2D’s at 20″ total at 4pm.
Snowpack: Cracking everywhere on the storm instability. I think the instability is when the storm increased in intensity early this morning but seemed to go away in the pm as ski cuts were not producing any cracks.

Avalanches: Skier triggered a few small windslabs from ridgeline at NTL elevation. These slabs were about 8″ to 12″ thick at 3pm and continuing to build.
Weather: Oooo blustery. Strong down valley winds in the Kebler Pass corridor and strong to extreme westerly winds at higher elevations. Snowing, but couldn’t make a call on hourly rates with all the wind.
Snowpack: Late afternoon tour. Cross loaded slopes BTL, and would have managed them for potential windslabs up to 12″ thick. At NTL elevations recent wind loading was obvious with observed slabs also in the 12″ range on the few easterly slopes I traveled above. Quick observations didn’t reveal any persistent weak layers and avalanche obs didn’t show much for propagation in this area.

Small skier triggered windslab at NTL elevation on easterly aspect.

Small skier triggered windslab at NTL elevation on easterly aspect.

Wind loading at 9,500ft

Avalanches: At 3:45 was skiing up valley when a saw a slide run out of the furthest north bowl on the east side of Gothic (my slide path 001 in case anyone kept that info). Ran down to near the river (an old size 3) but stopped as soon as terrain flattened out. Light was flat and I had no binoculars (or even my glasses) but I would assume a fracture out of the top of the bowl as it was windy up there much of the afternoon. Ran about 2600 feet. billy
Weather: Steady moderate to strong wind all night but with only light off and on blowing snow with a weak 1″ new and water 0.06″. Currently cloudy with very light snow and wind 5-10 gusting to 20. Snowpack at 43″.

12/24 Natural avalanche on northeastern aspect of Gothic Mountain

Avalanches: A pair of 2-3 foot soft slabs ran naturally today on the north face of Ruby Peak, failing on old snow at the ground. SS-N-R1-D2-O/G. These paths had been wind scoured close to the ground during the 12/16 storm, so I would expect similar instabilities could be found on reloading bed surfaces above treeline. No other activity observed.
Weather: Mild temps, scattered clouds. Light to moderate SW winds at ridge top with minimal transport, but moderate to strong wind transport observed off of the peaks in the Ruby Range and Beckwiths. Minimal transport on Axtell and Carbon Peak.
Snowpack: On low angle southerly aspects below treeline, the snow surface was 2-4 mm surface hoar over a thin, soft crust mid day. On westerly aspects, 1 mm near surface facets. Snow surface snow surface was becoming moist on these aspects by the afternoon, and it appears that these PWL’s got cooked into a crust by the end of the day (with very small facets above) at lower elevations, and got raked by winds at higher elevations.

2-4 mm surface hoar, low angle southerly aspects.

Fresh slides to the ground

Avalanches: Activity on baldy and gothic. Natural, maybe wet loose?
Weather:
Snowpack:

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