Gunnison

Snowpack

Evan Ross Zach Kinler · Mar 8, 2020 · Gunnison

Weather

Partly cloudy with intense sun at times, while others had a cooler feel with clouds. Calm winds throughout the day, until gaining ridgeline in the afternoon with a light southwesterly breeze.

Snowpack

Snowpack: Low elevations were a wet mess and unsupportive. We got out of that by climbing up some below treeline ENE facing slopes were only the upper 8cm's was wet. By the time we moved into more easterly facing terrain at 11,000ft the snow surface was already crusting back over. Here, moist snow was found all the way to the ground, and water had recently moved through the upper snowpack and was pooling around the 2/4 crust down ~50cm. Once that upper snowpack refreezes there will be no more concern for Persistent Slabs breaking deeply into the snowpack until we have another big warm up or we see a very large loading event. We finished on NE facing terrain, on those slopes anything with a slight easterly tilt or the low angles had a thin crust on the snow surface. Wet Avalanche issues were the main concern we encountered.