Gunnison

Avalanche

Zach Guy · Feb 1, 2016 · Gunnison

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Weather

Intense pulse of heavy snowfall (S5) ended around 9 a.m., with S-1 through the rest of the morning. Calm winds. Overcast skies.

Snowpack

About 30" of storm snow, fist hard. Ski pen was mid thigh. Widespread muffled collapses and shooting cracks on low angled terrain, where the storm snow sits on a thin melt-freeze crust (2cm), or on facets or surface hoar. Steep south aspects hold a 10cm thick meltfreeze crust below the storm snow.

Avalanche

Widespread natural storm slab instability on all aspects, mostly shallow and D1 to D1.5, but a few failing deeper and/or running long and far up to D2 in size (like the slides onto Kebler Road from 7 Sisters, where debris piles were 6 feet deep on the road). SS-N-R1-D1/D2-S. We remotely triggered and observed several similar naturals failing on either surface hoar layers or near surface facet layers at the storm interface up to 3 feet deep. SS-N/ASr-R2-D1.5/2-I. These were on E and NE aspects BTL.