Sawatch
AvalancheScott Toepfer · Mar 18, 2022 · Sawatch
Weather
Was prepared for more clouds, but just got the high thin stuff, lot of jet traffic contrails. Bit of a cold north breeze, moving a little bit of snow. Pretty nice mid-March day.
Snowpack
Traveled on south and west aspects above treeline. Got several good collapses on westerly aspects.’whoompfs we’re a bit muffled under the foot of new snow, but still got our attention. One crack was around 50-60 feet long. Basically on the westerly’s there were a couple prominent crusts sandwiching depth hoar of various size. Not much slab, mostly just the 10-12” of new snow. Collapses were unnerving for mid March, west aspects might get interesting with a strong spring upslope storm. Kept us on terrain 30* and less.
Avalanche
One small LNR1D.5G ran out of steep rock band, ran between our couple of laps, noonish. west aspect well above treeline. Only ran ~ 50-75 feet. Sun was too bright for pictures We saw 6 LNR1D1O on east aspects way off in the distance. Ran during the storm. East aspects ATL, just storm snow.