Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 04/06/2020
Name: Evan Ross
Subject: Upper Brush Creek
Aspect: North, East, South, West
Elevation: 9,000-13,300
Weather: Beautiful day. Some portions of the day had calm winds, while other times the southwest gusts were strong. Felt like a general breezy spring day.
Snowpack: Low elevations had a sold freeze overnight with strong crusts. Chainsawing snowmobiles to cool them down, just kicked up dry facets and melt forms after the track made it through the upper thick crusts. That same snowpack after 4pm was wet and punchy.
We spend most of the day above 12,400ft. Southerly facing slopes had very thin soft crusts in the morning over a dry snowpack. Those snow surfaces were soft and warm in the afternoon but didn’t have a wet loose avalanche issue. Northerly facing slopes were either settled good pow, or had some form of wind effect. I was blown away by how consolidated some of that chalky pow was on steep rocky faces, versus the normal weak sugar around rocks. Other than potential cornice hazard, we found normal caution and stable snow.
Heading home in the late afternoon we found small wet avalanche concerns on the east and south slopes traveled below 12,000ft.