Gunnison
AvalancheCBAC Staff · Jan 7, 2025 · Gunnison
Weather
Mostly cloudy, a few flakes with no accumulation, calm wind.
Snowpack
Below 10,000ft the snowpack was 100cm or less. Ski pen was ankle deep while boot pen was to the ground. Just skinning along the snowpack was often quiet; once you gave it a little stomp, you would produce a collapse and shooting cracks running hundreds of feet. The slab in this area was often 35 to 45cm thick on average. By about 10,400ft the HS in low-angled terrain had increased to 120cm or more. Collapse and shooting cracks had become stubborn and difficult to produce. I was giving wide margins to avalanche terrain that commonly had a notably shallower snowpack due to the Thanksgiving Cycle. I didn't see anywhere I could safely gather information on those shallower old bed surfaces. I gave wide margins to avalanche terrain as conditions felt ripe for remotely triggering something unexpected and impossible to predict how far a collapse would travel through the terrain. The low angle was skiing really well. Some of the bigger avalanche slopes above Gunsight Road may have avalanche again during the Christmas cycle. It is hard to tell from afar, but I was left wondering if any of that stuff had repeated below the still-visible Thanksgiving crowns.
Avalanche
Remotely triggered one avalanche on a small slope from about 100 feet away. I traveled very conservatively so I wouldn't run the risk of unexpectedly triggering a larger slope.