Gunnison
SnowpackEric Murrow · Mar 1, 2024 · Gunnison
Weather
Warm day overall with light winds and moderate gusts near treeline.
Snowpack
We chose to travel through this area looking for the shallowest snowpack in the Southeast Mountains forecast zone. Below treeline the height of snow ranged from 80 to 115cm with little slab formation; a small amount of 1-finger hard snow is present in the January Slab but did not produce any signs of instability, and produced slab fractures in stability tests. The snowpack below treeline in this shallow area is mostly faceted throughout but has just enough support for skinning and nice skiing conditions. At the upper reaches of below treeline around 10,500 feet, the slab gained enough strength to propagate a crack and produce slab avalanches at the early January interface. Near treeline snowpack depths increased to about 130cm and genuine avalanche problems appeared. There is a clear problem in the upper snowpack and on basal facets. We got propagating test results in the upper snowpack in two locations, 2/13 and 2/2. The surface hoar at 2/2 was huge, 1-2cm. We experienced one moderate-sized collapse in this area on the surface hoar. This area is not representative of the Southeast Mountains in general, but near treeline, it had some of the worst-looking structures I have seen this season. Slabs above 10,500 are at optimal depths and hardness for triggering in the upper snowpack and basal weak layers are a major concern for failure particularly with an incoming storm.