Gunnison

Snowpack

Crested Butte Avalanche Center · Jan 8, 2017 · Gunnison

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Weather

Weather: Temps: Single digits in the morning warming as we climbed to around 20 F at its warmest. Sky: High clouds building throughout the day. Wind: Light and variable all day.

Snowpack

Avalanches: On the decent we experienced some surprising whumping collapses but saw no avalanche activity. Snowpack: Snow pack depth varied from 140cm to 190cm, deeper as we climbed. No obvious signs of instability on the way up. Resistant planar fracture in compression test with 13 taps. The extended column test also showed a resistant planar fracture but it took 3 moderate loading steps to drive the failure across the column. Both tests fractured on buried surface hoar 60cm down from the surface.