Sawatch

Avalanche

John Mackinnon · Jan 1, 2021 · Sawatch

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Weather

A few clouds, light westerly winds at TL, seasonably mild temperatures.

Snowpack

Snowpack is weak and not very supportive on shady slopes below TL. Despite a generally weak and faceted snowpack in the trees I did still hear a few collapses in pretty tightly treed areas. However, I heard numerous loud collapses and observed lots of shooting cracks anywhere where the wind had lightly drifted December storm snow into a soft slab. This occurred in open areas in the trees, valley bottoms and below ridge-tops. Near TL, cracks propagated over 100 meters, went over a ridge and continued onto a different aspect. No avalanche released but the slope on the opposing aspect had "spider cracks" across it. Collapses were often rumbling and caused the trees to shed snow at times.

Avalanche

I did see a small R1-D1 slab avalanche in the looker's right starting zone in Question Mark Bowl (Buckeye B). It looked a few days old.