Gunnison
AvalancheEvan Ross · Mar 21, 2024 · Gunnison
Weather
Clear through the first half of the day, with cloud cover slowly starting to increase in the afternoon. Light to moderate winds.
Snowpack
On this tour, the best skiing conditions were between 11am and 12pm for southerly-facing slopes below 12,000ft. During that time, the snow surface was soft and ripe for spring skiing. I skied between 1:30pm and 2pm and by that time I was skinking to my ankles into wet snow and managing wet loose avalanches. At that time, it was easy to trigger wet avalanches in the SE-facing Spork. Those particular avalanches were growing in size and would have become large if the volume of snow avalible hadn't already avalanched earlier this week. On the more south-facing spoon, I mostly encountered roller balls until lower elevations below 11,000ft were small loose wet avalanches and areas with a punchy wet snowpack came into the picture.
Avalanche
Easy to trigger loose wet avalanches in the Spork and the Spoon after 1:30pm. This avalanche problem dictated terrain selection in the afternoon. Other avalanche activity from earlier this week included large wet avalanche debris below the Spork, D1.5 debris on the SW-facing terrain of Gothic Mountain, and a large slab avalanche in Verginia Basion near Avery Peak.