Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Dec 1, 2025 · Gunnison
Weather
Cool morning that felt quite warm in the sunshine but not warm enough to melt snow surfaces. A light, cold breeze did not transport much snow but some drifting was visible along the ridgelines of Treasure and Purple Mountain later in the day. Low-level clouds in North Anthracite Creek cleared out by 2PM.
Snowpack
The snowpack on north-facing slopes is around 30cm deep at 9000 ft. 50cm deep at 10,000 feet and most slopes above 11,000 feet were around 60cm deep. Below 10,000 feet the new snow fell on discontinuous melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) or ground for the most part. These northwest, north, and northeast-facing slopes had about 30-40cm of cohesionless new snow on top of 20-30cm of 1mm facets (FC) with a thin MFcr(DH) on the ground. The only slopes that showed any signs of instability were where wind-drifted snow along ridgelines to create a more cohesive slab. In these wind-drifted areas, it was easy to trigger a collapse that would occasionally have shooting cracks up to 15-20ft. away from my skis. Outside of wind-drifted snow, the new snow is only F hard (on the hand hardness scale) and showed no propagating failures in a number of extended column tests.
Avalanche
There was a small natural avalanche cycle on north-facing slopes near treeline in Yule and Raspberry Creek. The largest avalanche propagated around 500 feet wide across the slope despite the slab only being F to 4F- hard, but it was not big enough to bury a person. Most of the avalanches appear to have failed during the highest precipitation intensity on Nov. 30, around 14:00 to 17:00, with another couple of inches of new snow starting to fill them back in.