Sawatch
AvalancheJason Konigsberg blase reardon · Apr 27, 2018 · Sawatch
Weather
A few clouds in the morning diminished with clear skies by late morning.
Snowpack
Observations from recreational trip 4/26/18. The snow surface and the top few inches of the snowpack froze solidly on the night of 4/25. This trend will continue with clear skies despite temperatures close to freezing. We traveled from 9800 ft to 14,000 ft on supportable, frozen, and slippery snow surfaces. Boot crampons were necessary on any steep slope. The top inch of the snow surface softened on above-treeline slopes, but even in late afternoon there was little wet avalanche concerns. Steep and rocky areas that face due south and were sheltered from the cool northerly breeze may have had more concerns.---Near treeline the snowpack started to become slightly unsupportable on only shallow and rocky slopes. Open slopes stayed supportable and firm underneath the top inch of softened snow.---Overall, we saw no signs of instability and we were able to stay out much later in the day than expected.
Avalanche
We observed quite a few large to very large deep slab avalanches that most likely occurred during the first storm of April. Numerous recent smaller wet slides were observed that most likely occurred on Sunday.