Aspen

Avalanche

Sometime around March 15 or 16, 2024 Express 1 avalanche path ran to the valley floor covering Express Creek Road (a popular winter travel route) in up to 2-3 meters of avalanche debris. The path ran earlier this year around March 2 ( https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/field-report/cb9de1c6-0812-4eaf-8126-ea3b7866bb85 ) and around January 18 ( https://avalanche.state.co.us/observations/field-report/6ce9bbe6-bf74-4f15-a2e0-88407bbf32ce ). This is the third time this avalanche path put debris onto Express Creek Road this year with this avalanche being the largest one yet, although notably smaller than last year's avalanche in this path. The debris just made it to Express Creek on the north side of the track where a terrain feature splits the debris flow into two distinct paths unless it overruns that terrain feature like it did last year. The avalanche broke on basal facets at the ground across the start zone. Lower down the track there were two distinct crowns indicating the debris triggered additional slabs on steep northerly-facing slopes that failed on both the ground and the February 2 layer of buried surface hoar.