Sawatch
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · May 13, 2022 · Sawatch
Weather
Clear skies in the morning. Prescribed burn in Aspen area led to thick smoke in the later afternoon and continued cloud cover into the evening. Winds were calm in the morning until we got above treeline where gust were moderate. Much less windy than previous days.
Snowpack
Temperatures into the twenties on Thursday night and clear skies resulted in the best overnight refreeze of the snow surface in about a week. At the highest elevations (close to 14k) the snow barely softened. South-facing at noon was still fairly hard. Below 13k feet the top 3 inches of the dust-covered snow surface softened. On open slopes, the snowpack was still very supportable, even later in the day, and even below treeline where snow cover was consistent. On steep and rocky slopes, we were able to trigger small wet avalanches. The wet avalanches would run just in the top 3 inches of dusty snow. Below the this snow, the white, hard, old snow surface was very firm and supportable. We did not observe any punchy conditions below this hard layer, except right next large rocks.
Avalanche
We intentionally triggered a few small wet avalanches in steep and rocky, southeast-facing terrain at about 13k feet. It looked there may have been a few small naturals at a similar elevation on both east and north-facing slopes in sustained steep, very rocky terrain.