Aspen
SnowpackBrian Lazar · Feb 21, 2020 · Gunnison
Weather
A few thin high clouds, otherwise mostly sunny. Warm with temperatures climbing into the upper 20s at 11,700 ft. Just a slight westerly breeze at ridgetop, otherwise mostly calm. Very warm at lower elevations, and felt like springtime in the sun.
Snowpack
We investigated slopes that have avalanched at least once, and likely twice this season. Total snowpack depth was only 145cm near ridgetop which is less than half average snowpack depth for most of this area at similar elevations. The snowpack has two concerning interfaces: a crust-facet combination down about a 30cm, but this was not reactive in snowpack tests. The other is a layer of small-grained facets down about 75cm. We could not initiate a failure in this layer with an ECT, but did get a sudden collpase by wailing on the block post 10 taps from the shoulder. We tested this same layer with a PST and got failures to end 39/100, down 75cm. This suggests the hard-to-trigger, but high-consequence situation described elsewhere and observed in the adjacent Gunnison zone.