Aspen
Quick reportCarly Valerious, Dylan Craaybeek · Feb 22, 2026 · Aspen
Weather
It was very warm in the alpine today. Light winds and few clouds.
Snowpack
The new snow since February 11th is resting on well developed weak layers. Around 12,000 ft on an east-facing slope, snowpack tests resulted in propagation across the column at the February drought layer interface below a thin crust and down into the next interface below that. Directly after digging a pit in this location, we got a 1,000 ft, slope scale collapse with shooting cracks everywhere. Had this slope been steep enough, we would have seen a very large avalanche. Below tree line we did not see signs of instability. An ECT at 10,3000 ft did not result in propagation and had a thinner slab than what we saw at higher elevations (about 19 cm). That does not mean you cannot find isolated slopes below tree line with a cohesive and reactive slab right now.
Avalanche
There has been an incredible amount of natural avalanche activity these last few days. We saw constant signs of natural avalanche activity on surrounding slopes all day.