Grand Mesa
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek, Jewel Campbell · Feb 18, 2025 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Light snow in the morning clearing to mostly clear skies and plenty of sunshine for most of the day. Light to Moderate westerly wind throughout the day with some light snow transport.
Snowpack
Speaking to a few other parties of snowmobilers in the area they experienced "huge rumbling collapses" on several meadows on Monday and we got one slope scale collapse that shook a tree about 300 feet across the meadow. The snowpack structure here is very concerning in this area with a cohesive slab connected across the terrain and two well-developed weak layers of concern buried about 60 and 100cm deep. The upper persistent weak layer of concern, the January drought near-surface facets, are showing signs of rounding but are very well-developed and will be a concern for quite some time. The lower persistent weak layer of concern, depth hoar near the ground, is still weak and will take melting and refreezing to become not concerning, although it is in the lower 50cm of the snowpack which on most steep slopes in this area that doesn't fill in the scree and boulder fields. You would need a smooth planar slope with no rocks or scree to trigger an avalanche on the lower persistent weak layer of concern. Most steeper slopes facing south directions melted to the ground prior to this storm and now have about 1 to 2 feet of snow on bare ground or patches of discontinuous melt-forms.
Avalanche
Observed one recent avalanche on a wind-loaded, north-facing slope and found some evidence of older avalanches on a few small, steep slopes that seemingly had about 1 to 2 feet of snow covering the debris piles and crowns.