Gunnison
SnowpackAnonymous · Mar 3, 2012 · Gunnison
Weather
Around 12:30pm the winds picked up out of the West and Northwest with significant transport. Sunny most of the day.
Snowpack
Followed shelf road up alongside Elk Creek, crossing below a suspect slope, no activity. Turned around and on the way back down the road one ski dipped into a bit of a tree well (soft spot next to mostly buried pine tree), triggered a slide about 150' above the shelf road at about 11:15am. I immediately noticed the fractures and continued snowmobiling down to get out of path. It was a mostly open pitch, about 200' vertical, estimated slope angle of 35*. Slab fractured in the newest snow from Thursday/Friday and quickly stepped down to the next layer from Tuesday's snow. Unsure of how far up the drainage it propogated as the slope turned more easterly up hill and was out of sight. Estimated crown of 2.5' but some in spots only new snow had slid while in others both newest layers had slid. Rocks and shrubs were in the crown. Debris mostly stopped on the shelf road rather than the bottom of the creek bed. Looked to be between 5' and 6' deep debris. This was roughly 2000' feet East North East of Copley Lake. Deferred to lower angle, west facing terrain for the rest of the day with no signs of instability. I did dig a pit after* the slide (*stupid, do it before exposure). CT13 Q2 for newest snow, CT20 Q2 for Tuesday's snow. I was unable to initiate failure on the basal facets. Expected to find a sun crust for the poor bonding of Tuesday's snow to the older snow, but it was more like thin surface hoar than a crust. It is possible my pit was slightly more sheltered (closer to the bottom of the creek but same aspect) than the slope that slid, and thus didn't show a sun crust when the weak layer was indeed a crust.