Observations

Date of Observation: 01/21/2021
Name: Ian Havlick

 

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Redwell to First Bowl Skooks
Aspect: North, East, South East, South, South West, North West
Elevation: 9000-12,500

 

Avalanches: small D1 dry loose in first bowl Schuykill. Slow moving and avoidable but could get surprised in wrong terrain. Managed problem with avoidance and awareness. Smart re-grouping areas out of fall line.
Weather: Orographic snow showers mostly in AM. 2-3″ new snow accumulation. perfect Stellars, minimal wind except 20mph NW on ridgelines of Emmons. Minimal wind effect on Skook ridgeline. Temperatures moderated throughout day and say some greenhousing softening southerly slopes and surface snow.
Snowpack: Generally faceted with minimal slabs denser than 4F hardness. No formal pits but handpits and pole probing revealed minimal slabs. Travelled terrain with LOW danger in mind and saw no signs of instability. Widespread 1-2″ windboard capping facets in Redwell. Potentially todays stellars temporary weak layer when buried?

 

Date of Observation: 01/16/2021
Name: Chris Martin

 

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Snodgrass/Gothic Road
Aspect: North, North East, East
Elevation: 9600-10000

Avalanches: D1 Avalanche on East Facing aspect, Hard slab, looks to be 30cm thick, Naturally triggered. Not sure if it released today or prior to today.
Weather: Partly cloudy AM into a blue bay day
Snowpack: Hunting for wind load, found on Easterly slopes BTL in isolated pockets. They began as thin crusts and with some hunting we found 6-12″ hard slabs, Pencil hard. Cracking beneath feet to about 6′ around some of us and one that shot our fairly far, see photos.

No propagating test results, only dug in areas where there was no wind affect and deteriorating slabs existed, did not dig in wind slab.

Depth Hoar at base of pack is growing in size (NOV 6th Layer 3-4mm FC/DH). The Dec 10th FC layer down 45cm is also exhibiting signs of facet growth. Slab above Dec 10th layer F-4F and continuing to deteriorate.

 

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/16/2021
Name: Zach Guy

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Various valley locations near Crested Butte
Aspect: North East
Elevation: 8900-9200′

Avalanches: None
Snowpack: We targeted a handful of obvious windloaded features from strong valley winds near town. Wind drifted slabs were 2″ to 5″ thick, pencil hard. Some would crack after undercutting and stomping on the slope, others would crack as we crossed the slope, with shooting cracks up to 10′.  Slabs were all small and localized to easily identified features such as rollovers or in gullies.
The rest of the terrain that we traveled on was all bottomless facets with some wind texture on the surface.

 

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/16/2021
Name: Andrew Breibart

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Walrod
Elevation: BTL

Avalanches: NA
Weather: calm winds at the surface and near/above freezing temperatures early AM. Mostly cloudy transitioning to partly cloudy skies.
north winds ATL and above appeared to be moderate by movement of winds but no wind transport observed on ridges.
Snowpack: Trace of graupel (1mm) in size.
Strong winds Wednesday and Thursday created a mosaic of stiff and soft wind slabs on all aspects in openings. Poking around in other areas resulted in unsupportive snow up to 12 inches. The snowpack here is shallow or devoid on southerly aspects with high incoming UVA radiation.

Snowpack is best summed up Forrest Gump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgZXC1OGhR8

 

Date of Observation: 01/15/2021
Name: Zach Guy, Zach Kinler, Jared Berman

 

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: West Brush Creek towards Coffee Pot Pass
Aspect: East, South, West
Elevation: 9,000 to 12,800′

 

Avalanches: We intentionally triggered a hard slab avalanche on a small, heavily windloaded terrain feature on an east aspect below treeline. The slab was about a foot thick and about 300 feet wide, D1.5 in size. It was made up of windrifted snow failing on weak facets.
Weather: Clear skies, mild temps, periods of moderate to strong gusts drifting faceted snow.
Snowpack: We traveled mostly on low angle terrain below treeline and some steeper slopes on westerly aspects near and above treeline. Below treeline, we triggered about a dozen collapses and shooting cracks on the 12/10 interface which is about 15″ down, 4-5mm depth hoar. Collapses were mostly in concave or leeward terrain features that had collected additional windloading from last night’s winds. Wind drifts were pencil hard, 2″ to 8″ thick on average, and localized to mostly just drainage bottom. The drifts themselves also cracked easily under our weight where they formed on near surface facets. As we gained elevation, it appeared that winds mostly just scoured snow away on all aspects. The few drifts that we found were thin and unreactive. On steeper westerly aspects, we didn’t observe any signs of instability; the snowpack is generally thin and all weak facets, apart from a wild mess of firm wind crusts and sastrugi on the surface.
We targeted a test pit just above the crown of a large avalanche that ran naturally in late December on an east aspect above treeline. The slab was 60 cm thick, and is faceting throughout, but still has about 10 cm of 1F- in the midpack. The failure layer was 2-3 mm facets either above or below a soft (4F) decaying meltfreeze crust. Stability tests on the structure today produced hard, non propagating results in an extended column test (ECTN28 x 2), and propagating results in a propagation saw test (PST40/100 END x 2 on 20201210) just above the crust.

 

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/14/2021
Name: Cosmo Langsfeld

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Cement Creek
Elevation: 9250’

Weather: Literally. Also snow devils.

Snowpack: Wind died down late Thursday morning and picked up again in the evening. Wind drifts in the valley bottom on Thursday we’re small. Depth mostly measured in inches, not feet.

Date of Observation: 01/14/2021
Name: CB Nordic Explorers

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: Crested Butte

Avalanches: A skier in our after school Nordic programs remote triggered this little guy walking just off of the groomed trail. You can see his tracks approaching the slope on the bottom lookers right. Wow! No teenagers were harmed in the making of this observation.

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/13/2021
Name: Alex Tiberio

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Elevation: 9500

Photos:

Date of Observation: 01/12/2021
Name: Alex Tiberio

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: NE side of snodgrass
Aspect: North, North East, East
Elevation: 10,500

Avalanches: Easy to trigger dry loose avalanches in steep terrain

Snowpack: Seems as though everywhere we traveled the slab had faceted away. The one formal pit we dug at 10,600 produced ECTN results

Date of Observation: 01/10/2021
Name: Eric Murrow

 

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Location: North “bowl” on carbon peak
Aspect: North, North East, North West
Elevation: 10,000′ – 12,000′

 

Avalanches: skier-triggered loose avalanche in surface snow on a very short, roll-over. The steep slope was short so only entrained the top few inches.
Weather: Mostly clear day with cool air temperatures. Light winds at 12,000′, no transport observed.
Snowpack: Traveled through northerly slopes only. Produced one collapse around 10,400′ that rolled maybe 100ish feet – dug profile nearby to have a look/test, see photos. Produced a few other small collapses below treeline but fairly localized, ~30 foot radius. Ski pen was surprisingly good at 6″ – so trail breaking was pleasant. As we ascended to near treeline the snowpack felt similar, just a bit deeper – slab never felt more than 4f finger hardness (did not travel through drifted features). Walked through a variety of meadows above 11K with little or no traffic this winter and stomped hard looking for a collapse but nada even though pole probing indicated the obvious weak snow at bottom of snowpack. Skied slopes in the low 30-degree range but actively avoided nearby steeper features in the near treeline elevation band without any signs of instability. While descending, experienced a couple of spots with “trap-door” conditions where we sunk deeply into the snowpack even near treeline where snowpack depth decreased to less than 70cms. It is clear that the slab continues to lose strength due to faceting, but there are still a few places/features that can produce a smaller Persistent Slab avalanche below treeline but those places are becoming harder to find.

Photos: