Date of Observation: 02/09/2021

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Taylor Park
Aspect: North, North East
Elevation: 9400-12100ft.

Avalanches: (I realize Taylor Park is outside of the CBAC forecast area, but figured since it’s close and most easily accessed through our county I’d provide some basic observations, if appropriate).

No avalanches observed due to slopes traveled through being less than 30 degrees in pitch, and low visibility preventing us from seeing other surrounding peaks.

Multiple small-large collapses in low angle terrain. 2 slab fractures/collapses on wind-loaded convexities, with both slopes in the 28-30 pitch at their steepest, and cracks propagating 30-60 feet. On inspection of the second collapse, 1F hard wind slab appeared to have broken on basal facets. The snow pack here was deeper than anywhere else probed during the tour, about 3 feet.
Weather: Low visibility, S1, winds estimated at 0-20 mph, temps ranging from roughly 30-20 degrees.
Snowpack: Very variable! Ranges from a few inches to about 3 feet. In many places the entire snowpack was faceted through. In some places we found F-1F slabs on top of facets. In a few isolated wind tunnels we found P hard slabs that we couldn’t get to collapse or crack with two people jumping on. Overall it appeared that the western portion of Taylor park did not receive much of the recent snow.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 02/09/2021
Name: Alex T

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Gothic, CO
Aspect:
Elevation: 9500

Photos:

Date of Observation: 02/08/2021
Name: Eric Murrow

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Cement Creek viewing into Southeast Mountans
Aspect: North, North East, East, South East, South
Elevation: most of it

Avalanches: A bunch :-) Did not observe any below treeline avalanches but I largely could see near and above treeline terrain across the Southeast Mountains. Most avalanche activity was on drifted northeast through east through southeast slopes. A few looked to be close to D3 in size, most were D2, but I often only saw the crown not the extent of debris. Overall there was less avalanche activity in the Southeast Mountains than the Northwest Mountains and the size was often a bit smaller none the less there were many dangerous avalanches observed from the past few days.
Weather: Mostly clear to partly cloudy skies with strong winds near treeline. Some snow transport was observed but many above treeline slopes look to be hammered by the wind with fetches running low on transportable snow.
Snowpack: Spent just a second looking at the snowpack but at 9,700′ near Deadman TH, I found HS of 85cm with 25cm sitting above mid-January weak layer. Further up Cement Creek near Reno Divide HS climbed to about 100cm with 35cm soft slab resting above January weak layer. Did not observe any below treeline avalanche but I would suspect with another round of snowfall, steep below treeline slopes will start to become dangerous in this area.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 02/07/2021
Name: Alex T

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Gothic
Aspect: South East
Elevation: NTL

Avalanches: The bench avalanche path ran during last nights wind, just barely spilling out into maxfield meadow

Photos:

Date of Observation: 02/07/2021
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Mt Emmons
Aspect: South East, South
Elevation: 9,200-11,700

Weather: Partly cloudy sky, warm temps, winds increasing in the afternoon. At times snow was transporting off the peaks and NTL/ATL ridgelines, though not consistently and fetches were running lower.

Snowpack: 2/7. No obvious signs to instability observed. The upper snowpack was becoming thick with warm temps and the sun. In the afternoon the wind started to buff the snow surface and create pockets of stiffer wind board around 11,000ft. We simply used the terrain to manage the avy problems, had some good turns and didn’t go looking for unstable conditions.

2/6. Similar tour as the following tour on 2/6. We spent a bit more time investigating the snowpack structure on a ESE aspect at 10,400ft. The slope angle at this sight was about 30 degrees. HS 140cm. The 12/10 interface was easy to feel with a ski pole and identify in the pit fall. This layer of concern consisted of F hard ~2mm NSF. Facets below the crust at the 1/19 interface were not immediately identified in the pit wall. Small column tests more clearly identified this 2nd layer of concern and produced sudden results. No obvious signs to instability were observed on this tour, until a couple occasions were someone didn’t have skis on and punched deeply into the snowpack. Several large collapses resulted.