Sawatch

Avalanche

Ben Pritchett · Apr 12, 2019 · Sawatch

Weather

Broken skies with light to moderate westerly winds. Enough sun to cook steep sunny slopes, but just shy of getting a real Loose Wet problem.

Snowpack

Found drifts up to 90cm deep, though highly irregular depths were the norm. Even slopes that from a distance appeared consistently loaded tapered up or down in the depth of recent drifting around each terrain feature. Walked through around around 2000' of drifted snow and could not get one crack. Ski penetration was generally around 15cm in drifts. Dug on northeast in a drift much deeper than I could probe ground. Got an ECTP down 55 on stellars, but couldn't get cracking in adjacent snow when I stomped around profile hole. Bottomline, any Wind Slab problem is stubborn at best and specific to patches of drifted snow near ridgelines. Not quite enough sun to kick off Loose Wet on southwest facing slopes at 3pm. Reaching upslope and pulling my pole basket easily entrained the 3-4" of moist storm snow into a micro sluff, but stepping on small steep rolls produced sluffing that only gouged an inch or so deep. It was just on the verge being able to trigger a small Loose Dry avalanche, but no quite.

Avalanche

No recent avalanche seen w/ binocs along the Continental Divide in the Monarch area.