Sawatch

Avalanche

John MacKinnon ยท Jan 27, 2015

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Weather

Mostly clear skies, mild temperatures and light westerly winds.

Snowpack

Tour into Cal. Gulch Area. Visited most aspects. Observed an average HS of about 65 cm in areas not affected by the sun or wind. In shady sheltered areas the snowpack is very weak--mostly faceted snow that is showing some rounding. Areas that had seen previous wind-loading had a relatively deeper and stronger snowpack and showed more consistently rounded grains. The snowpack is shallow or non-existent on many sunny slopes with moist snow evident on all sunny slopes holding onto snow in the PM. The DH and larger facets at the bottom of the snowpack are sintering and the edges of many of the individual grains are beginning to round. We dug several profiles in a clearing at around 11,300 ft. HS ranged from 65 cm to 95 cm depending on the previous amount of wind loading at the specific location. CTs produced repeatable non-planar results down about 10 cm--below the 1/11 interface. One deep tap test produced a drop in the lower snowpack--DTH (SC) on 3.0 mm rounding DH at 15 cm.

Avalanche

N.O.