Gunnison

Avalanche

Ben Pritchett · Mar 28, 2019 · Gunnison

View on map

Weather

3rd hot day in a row

Snowpack

50-150cm deep snowpack. Rapid melt on sunny low elevation slopes with water draining out the bottom of the pack. Steep full-sun slopes generally less than about 50 or 60cm. Snowpack was isothermal and wet throughout. On slopes with partial sun and a deeper snowpack showed a wetting front down about 10cm with all grains above that wetted polycrystals. Dry, very stiff (pencil-hard) snow below was riddles with vertical and horizontal frozen ice bodies from previous drainage reaching the ground. Shady slopes had a thin melt-freeze crust on a dense dry snowpack with little to no melt-water percolation below the crust.

Avalanche

Visited a previously reported avalanche in Cement Creek narrows, a few hundred feet up-valley from the winter trailhead. Observed a few other small full-depth wet slab avalanches near the valley floor.