Sawatch
AvalancheJason and Katie Konigsberg · Dec 8, 2022 · Sawatch
Weather
There were some bursts of snow in the morning but it didn't seem like today's snow amounted to much. It was really windy and unpleasant near treeline and above in the morning. By later afternoon clouds started to break and winds decreased.
Snowpack
Most every slope that we approached collapsed, with shooting cracks a few hundred feet wide. This was true even on a south-facing slope we ascended. The snowpack structure on due south consisted of a melt-freeze crust at the ground with 10 cm of faceted crystals on top, and then 45 cm (18 in.) of storm snow from the last ten days. On a northeast-facing slope we found a snow height of 90 cm (3 ft). The top 60 cm (2 ft) consists of snow since about Thanksgiving. This is the slab. It gets progressively harder from the surface, up to one-finger hard, to where it sits on fist-hard, large-grained, faceted crystals.---The overall impression of this area is that snow coverage exists on normally scoured slopes, although still thin. On north through east-facing slopes, the slab is thick and cohesive. We only saw a few wide avalanches from the last series of storms. It seems like this area is primed for a big avalanche cycle with the next significant load.
Avalanche
Natural avalanches observed were small to large. We did not observe any shockingly large or wide avalanches in this area. The avalanche cycle was also not widespread, there was one or two avalanches in each drainage. Visibility was not great so it's possible we missed some.