Date of Observation: 01/08/2022
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Washington Gulch, just before Coneys. NE 9,500-10,700ft.
Weather: Calm wind, mostly cloudy sky, Snowing throughout most of the day with several heavy pulses. The sun made its way through the clouds a few times with a bit of a greenhouse effect. 25cm of low-density new snow at 2:30 pm at 10,600ft. About 15cm of new snow on the shady side of the car back at the trailhead.
Snowpack: HS at 9,700ft was around 160cm, and increased to around 190cm at 10,600ft. The snowpack was deep everywhere we traveled and we observed no signs of instability. We dug one pit near our highpoint with a deep and progressively stronger snowpack over 15cm of 3-4mm faceted grains that were 4F hard. No SH under the new snow at that location. No CT results in the upper 100cm of the snowpack.
We chose to avoid one steep slope in the upper 30-degree range where a trained eye could see that there had been past avalanche activity. No crown visible, but snow piled on the uphill sides of the trees below.