Location: Paradise Divide Area & Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/15/2020
Name: Ben Pritchett and Evan Ross
Subject: Gothic area obs

Avalanches: A fresh very large natural avalanche ran on a southerly facing slope. The slab appears to have released under a cross-loaded cornice on southeast-facing fracture, but propagated broadly, wrapping to south, then south-west facing terrain. It released near the ground.

Weather: Ridgeline Wind Speed: 20-30 mph
Ridgeline Wind Direction: W
Wind Loading: Light
Temperature: 30 F
Sky Cover: Overcast
Depth of Total Snow: 120 cm
Most Significant Precip Rate: S-1 – < 1 cm/hr
Weather Description: Partly cloudy becoming overcast by mid-afternoon. Spitting snow off and on mid-afternoon, no accumulation. Strong winds aloft, but sheltered and pretty warm where we traveled with no drifting close by. Light drifting above treeline

Snowpack: Nice snow surfaces for incoming storm – well settled, dense, and decomposing grains, near zero C. A couple of faint, muffled collapses in weak spots near old drifted slabs, but no cracking. No consistent persistent slab structure observed in this terrain, though we still avoided slopes over 40 degrees that dumped into terrain traps. 2/3 facet layer is somewhat weaker than near surface snow above it, but all pretty close to 4 Finger stiff.

Photos:

Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/16/2020
Name: Cosmo
Subject: Cement Creek Snow
Elevation: 9400’

Weather: Just a skiff of new snow over night and light snowfall @ 7am. Looks socked in and snowing a little harder up valley toward Reno and Italian.

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/15/2020
Name: Frank S
Subject: Coon Basin
Aspect: East
Elevation: 12,000

Avalanches: D3 R3. Most of north side of Coon Basin has slid, probably this morning, as I didn’t notice it yesterday. Appears to have stepped down in several areas. Appears naturally triggered

Weather: Bluebird

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/14/2020
Name: Frank S
Subject: Mt Emmon
Aspect: North, North East, East
Elevation: 9,000′-11’300

Avalanches: A few small avalanches in wind-loaded pockets, were covered by the latest snow.

Weather: Bluebird

Snowpack: Rotten layer 12″ down, crust on E aspects, powder NE-N.

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/15/2020
Name: Eric Murrow
Subject: Coon Basin avalanche
Aspect: East, South East
Elevation: 12,000′

Edited 2/16 AM after site visit with additional photos

Avalanches: Avalanche in easterly facing Coon Basin visible this morning, Saturday 2/15 From valley bottom looks to be fairly large and destructive.

Photos:

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 02/14/2020
Name: Irwin Snow Safety
Subject: Large Avalanches Scarp Ridge/Irwin Cat Tenure
Aspect: South West, West
Elevation: 10-12,000ft

Avalanches:

Tried a lighter touch and made a huge mess anyhow,

Everything from Spool through the Eyes of the World (SW ATL) is basically gone with 120 to 140 cm crowns running on basal facets on the ground. Complex events with moving slabs triggering additional action. Dramatic. PM form event descriptions are summarized
.

1st event went with a 6lb AB. 2nd event was a single 2×16 and released remotely 10m below the shot. 3rd event triggered by us unloading a 4 shot spread just trying to get the hell out of there. 4th event was a 6lb surface shot cleaning up the remaining hangfire.

All were very large relative to me, but not surpassing D2.5 in size. This area has received intermittent explosive control through the season, but almost no skier compaction. These were the first significant avalanches of the season in all paths that ran.

Spool HS-AB(6lb)-R2/D2.5-G 120cm x 10m x 200m; Right Eyebrow HS-AEr(3lb from 10m)-R2/D2.5-G 140cm x 30m x 200m; Cheddar Bunny Left HS-AE(3lb)-R2/D2-G 140cm x 10m x 200m Left Eyeball Hangfire HS-AE(6lb)-R2/D2-G 140cm x 20m x 150m

Weather: Clear, 20-35 deg, WSW 15-20 g25-46

Snowpack: Good skiing, no signs of instability besides the large explosive triggered avalanches.

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 02/14/2020
Subject: Scarps Ridge
Aspect: East

Photos:

Location: Paradise Divide Area
Date of Observation: 02/14/2020
Subject: small avalanche
Aspect: North East
Elevation: ATL

Avalanches: One natural R1D1.5 on NE aspect off Purple ridge top from small chunk of cornice falling off. probably 10 feet wide at start but grew wider and then fanned out in flats after running approx. 200 feet.

Weather: Winds transporting snow off ridge.

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 02/13/2020
Name: Ian Havlick
Subject: Kebler Pass/Irwin
Aspect: East, South East, South, South West, West
Elevation: 10-12,000ft

Avalanches:

multiple D1 windslabs in UWW terrain. Otherwise, no explosive testing in any terrain
due to low visibility. Observed D2 windslabs in east-facing alpine terrain on Ruby late in day.

Weather: Full storm conditions with S2 snowfall this morning and 20-30mph winds, cold, single-digit temperatures all day. Overcast skies trended to partly cloudy skies after 1500. No significant solar impacts today. 5″ storm total, .45″ SWE

Snowpack: Many minor windslabs ski cut in primarily west facing cross-loaded terrain with largest slabs in west facing, near treeline. Ventured into west-facing alpine, but was largely getting stripped by westerly winds straight up and over the terrain. East and south facing terrain really were not accumulating many reactive windslabs, as we monitored throughout the day. Found very weak crust facet combination on south-facing near treeline behaving very oddly producing widespread collapsing and shooting cracks in terrain we have not trafficked this year. One collapse remotely triggered a very small storm/windslab pocket uphill from us.

Photos:

Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/13/2020
Name: Dan K
Subject: Cement BTL
Aspect: East
Elevation: 9200

Snowpack: Quick lap up warm springs and down walrod. While breaking in a fresh skintrack to cut the switchback on warm springs there was poor structure on E facing slopes. 2″ of new snow on top of crust on top of generally supportive slab with some other crust layers likely mixed in. Every 40 steps I would collapse through the slab into a mess of weak snow at the bottom of the pack. Cracking and collapsing remained local and HS was about 80cm on most spots that I checked. The larger E facing slide paths above walrod cutoff trail likely have a similar structure and I would be nervous about them with new loading.