The New Year storm….already historic and still counting!

By Zach Guy.  CBAC Director/Lead Forecaster

Credit: Xavier Fane

Since January 1st, the Gunnison Valley has been in the bullseye for heavy moisture streaming in from the Pacific.  CBMR recorded 47″ last week and 30″ this week as of Tuesday morning.  Irwin has recorded 87″ out of this storm.  We usually hear from billy barr by 7 a.m. for Gothic reports, but we’re getting radio silence this morning, so I’m assuming that he’s given up on digging and has turned to his stack of movies and chocolate barrs.  But Gothic was at 86″ yesterday.  Holy Cow!

Credit: Chris Miller

The first half of the storm came in pleasantly low density. On January 3rd, CBMR got 14″ of 2% density snow. On the 4th, I came into the office to no snow, and by the time I left a few hours later, 10″ had piled up, the kind that you clean your windshield with by blowing on it. On January 5th, Irwin got 20″ of 5% snow, with steady 2″-3″/hour rates.   

The next major pulse on January 9th was just the opposite: warm and wet.  In a fantastic display of atmospheric absurdity, CBMR got 30″ of dense snow.  Schofield picked 3″ of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) in a mere 16 hours. (SWE is the water weight of the snow…multiply by about 12 or 15 to calculate how much snow fell for average conditions).  It felt like I had just gotten out of the shower when I got back from the field to investigate a 3 foot slide that ran naturally across Kebler Pass Road.  Trail breaking was miserable, wallowing through thigh deep, upside-down heavy snow. I’m sure countless people pulled out their backs shoveling. The Crested Butte Community School closed for the first time since 1970.  CBMR closed early due to safety concerns.  I counted at least two emails from billy barr that started with “It’s a mess”. With the rain line hovering near town, roof avalanches were ripping out right and left.  Winds have been howling.

Of course, we haven’t had much in the way of visibility since then, and with few people traveling in the backcountry right now, observations have been limited.  Two large slides ran across Kebler Pass Road, piling 8 feet of debris on the road.  I caught just enough clearing to spot a slide that ran to ground near Red Ridge. A lot of the paths near town were still holding as of yesterday afternoon.

Now to the weather stats. Schofield Pass SNOTEL has been operating since 1985.  As of Tuesday morning, the site has picked up 10.5″ of SWE since New Year’s. This storm has surpassed all but one major storm in the past 32 years.  We have another major pulse arriving Tuesday night into Wednesday and continued stormy weather into the weekend.  This could push us beyond the historical 1986 storm, which reached 13.5″ of SWE.  Yowza!!

We have had avalanche warnings and high avalanche danger for 4 days of this storm.  Tomorrow we trended to extreme danger, something I’ve never done in my 6 years here (We missed a day of extreme danger back in 2014).  Extreme danger calls for a very unusual event: widespread natural avalanche activity D3 in size, with the potential for some natural avalanches D4 or greater in size. Avalanches will break trees and may include areas of mature timber. Avalanches will likely run full path through all elevation bands, thus we paint all elevations black. These types of events happen so rarely that they are incredibly tough for forecasters to predict.  In the 5 storms shown above, all of them saw widespread natural activity, and with the exception of 2010, all of them saw long running avalanches to the valley. 2010 saw most avalanches run before they reached the volume capable of historic paths. This year, we don’t have as pronounced of weak layers as in some years, but we’re seeing an exceptional load that could break the camel’s back: the volume is already there.  We will see what data we have tomorrow and how the next pulse of snow and wind is shaping up. Either way, it is very dangerous in the backcountry right now.

Credit: Xavier Fane

Regardless of whether we are at high or extreme tomorrow or the following days, our travel advice is pretty simple during an avalanche warning. Just stay off of and out from under avalanche terrain: slopes steeper than about 30 degrees or low angle slopes connected to steeper terrain above.  Most backcountry travelers know better than to jump into big alpine faces during this kind of storm, but it can be the sneaky or small avalanche paths that kill you.  We are more worried about a shoveler getting buried in a roof avalanche, or a kid on the sledding hill, or a dog walker on Peanut Lake Road, or a commuter to Irwin during storms like this.   Our snowpack is shaping up to be a deep and strong one this year, so let’s give it its due time to recover from this historical storm, and then let’s enjoy a great winter ahead!  And be sure to thank your local ski patrollers for their tough and dangerous work to reduce the risk of avalanches at CBMR. There have been two patrollers caught and carried in large slides this week. Those guys and gals hang it out there to get terrain open for you.

Back in the flow. Zach Guy, CBAC Director

The Western U.S. is coming out of a long drought and the atmospheric snow guns have finally replaced the artificial ones that were building our ski area’s snow base. With snow comes avalanches. There were two avalanche fatalities in the West over the weekend: a skier in closed terrain in Mt Rose Ski Tahoe on Saturday, and a backcountry skier near Cooke City, MT on Sunday. We send our sincere condolences to all of those affected by these tragedies.  Here in Colorado, there has been a stroke of divine luck, with a number of multi-party burials that resulted in profound learning lessons, rather than fatalities. A trio of skiers in Butler Gulch, near Berthoud Pass, were all caught and buried on Saturday. Two of them were only partially buried and were able to rescue the third. On Sunday, a skier was caught in a slide near Red Mountain Pass and two snowmobilers were fully buried but rescued by their group near Steamboat. On Monday, a snowmobiler was buried near Crested Butte.  Needless to say, avalanche season is upon us.

The search area for the avalanche victim at Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe. Photo courtesy of Washoe County Search and Rescue.

The Elk Mountains have been in a favorable zonal flow pattern since December 6th. CBMR reported 18” of snow in the past week, and some of our backcountry areas have picked up almost twice that. More is on the way this weekend. Anytime we have periods of dry weather, especially early season, our snowpack develops weak layers. Once we start getting back into the storm track, those weak layers get loaded and stressed, creating avalanche concerns. Sometimes these avalanches can act in surprising or unique ways, like being triggered from long distances away or from flat terrain. This video demonstrates the challenging nature of persistent slab avalanche problems, where there is a cohesive slab over a persistent weak layer.

A group of 3 skiers were buried in this slide in Butler Gulch, CO on Saturday. Photo courtesy of CAIC.

It is easy to get caught up in the powder frenzy this time of year. We’ve all been itching to arc those graceful turns down powder filled slopes or throttle through deep pillows and faceshots. But we need to draw a line and stay behind it. One of my mentors up in Montana recently discussed how taking one step back from the line is insufficient. “To ensure a lifetime in the mountains, it is a matter of taking three or four steps back.” The CBAC got an observation yesterday, reporting signs of instability, which concluded with: “Suspect a successful tour could have been had with proper navigation today, but the instabilities spooked us, especially while navigating unfamiliar terrain. We opted to head home.” I applaud that kind of decision making. There isn’t any kind of steep or deep powder run that exceeds the reward of returning home safe at the end of the day.

Snow profile showing unstable results near Crested Butte. 12/11/16

If you are new to the area or visiting, make sure you tune into our avalanche advisories at www.cbavalanchecenter.org. Our forecast team has been in frenzy the last couple weeks to keep tabs on the state of the snowpack. On Sunday, after a big pulse of moisture plowed through the night before, we had all three of our forecast staff up three prominent drainages surrounding our town digging into and documenting the snowpack to help aid in your backcountry decision making. Use our website and observations page as a resource! Give those guys a pat on the back for their often stressful and sleep deprived work during the holiday season. You can just sense the anxiety in Havlick’s voice in this video, and I bet the poor guy hasn’t done his laundry in 2 weeks now. And thank our ski patrollers at CBMR and respect roped off or closed terrain. Those guys and gals are working hard to mitigate avalanche hazards to get terrain open.

Thanksgiving and avalanches. By Zach Guy

Shooting cracks are a sign that the snowpack might have taken a few too many scoops of mashed potatoes and stuffing.

It has been a wonderfully warm and dry fall, which is hard to complain about. But if we can be brutally honest with the weather gods, fall really was starting to wear out its welcome, and we are happy to open the door to winter. There’s nothing quite like surfing over powder, so it’s time to dust off those skis, find your beacon, shovel, and probe, and start tuning into our daily avalanche reports.

Early season skiing and riding comes with some challenges and risks. The snow coverage is still quite shallow, so striking rocks and logs are tough to avoid and they can end your season pretty quickly. My strategies include getting on the fattest skis I can find, riding like a gaper in the backseat, and using releasable bindings in case my tips dive under a log or rock. I’ve seen a few too many broken tib-fibs from early season riding. And of course, we all want to go to where the snowpack is deepest, which can open the doors to another scary threat: avalanches. This time of year, the slopes holding deep and continuous coverage often carry the greatest risk of triggering an avalanche. It is almost impossible to go through fall without a shallow, crusty, and faceting foundation forming on the ground. Then once we start building a deeper snowpack, it creates a persistent slab avalanche problem above these layers.

Skier triggered slides in Red Lady Bowl

I like analogies, so let’s compare our current year’s snowpack to your most recent Thanksgiving celebration. You probably avoided food all day, maybe even went for a turkey trot to work up an appetite in preparation for the big feast. A significant drought, indeed. That left you weak and frail, just like the lingering snowpack layers that survived our fall drought. Then once dinner time (i.e. winter time) rolled around, you started off at a decent pace. Snacked on some hor devoirs, some salad, maybe some of your Uncle’s famous deviled eggs or your Grandma’s bean dip. Our first few storms behaved in similar fashion, fairly small and steady loads, with a handful of isolated avalanches. Nothing too scary yet. Then it is dinner time: you go for the mash potatoes, stuffing, turkey, green bean casserole, and of course drown it all under gravy. Extra rolls? Why not? Whammo. That’s a heavy load, just like our last storm, which dumped almost 2 feet in places. Both scenarios are dangerous. You could collapse on the couch just as easily as you could collapse those fragile weak layers near the ground. During and after the storm, we saw both natural and skier triggered avalanches, some quite large and surprisingly wide. As of Tuesday night, I’m expecting we’ll see evidence of a lot more avalanche activity as we get better visibility over the next few days. So tread carefully out there, and check the avalanche report before you go out. So what’s next for our snowpack? Does it reach for another plateful of mashed potatoes before slamming down some pumpkin pie and faceplanting onto the floor? Or does it slowly nibble at the leftover turkey and try to stay awake for family charades? Only the weather can dictate that one. But you can be the captain of your risks by making rational decisions and practicing your rescue skills. Is it a coincidence that this Friday night is our Annual Avalanche Awareness Night, with the theme “Human Factors and Decision Making”? Or that Saturday is our annual Beacon Brushup, a free and valuable opportunity to dial in your rescue skills for the winter? I think not. See you there!