Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Jan 27, 2023 · Aspen
Weather
Mostly sunny with Scattered sky cover at 9:00 in Ashcroft with temperatures in the low 20's Fahrenheit, much warmer morning than the past few days. Cloud coverage increased to Overcast and precipitation began around 11:00 growing to S2 by 13:00 with Moderate southerly wind transporting snow onto north and northeast-facing around Cathedral Lake.
Snowpack
The combination of a lack of signs of instability and snowpack test scores can easily instill a sense of false confidence in backcountry users in this area. The snowpack structure is still very poor with very well-developed F-hard (on the hand hardness scale) depth hoar making up the bottom 15-30cm of the snowpack on all northerly and easterly aspects and a slab around 1 meter thick resting on top of it. Extended column tests throughout the day all had no fractures occur (ECTx) until additional loading steps were done then they all failed on the mid-November facet layer. ECTx scores and low Propagation Saw Test scores (less than 25% of the block) continue to highlight the lower likelihood of triggering an avalanche but the severe consequences if you do. The overall average height of snow (HS) throughout the Cathedral Lake/Pine Creek drainage varied between 120-170cm with many signs of wind transport near and above the treeline with many westerly and southerly slopes scoured to the ground and a thin, supportable wind slab on many leeward slopes. South-facing aspects above and near the treeline have two prominent melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) near the surface and a layer of faceted crystals at the base. The basal facets on most of these southerly slopes are not well-developed depth hoar from the mid-November dry spell and will most likely "heal" or round to become less concerning layers much faster than slopes where the mid-November depth hoar layer does exist. The two MFcr's near the surface on southerly slopes fail easily during snowpack tests and have small facets below the poorly developed crusts.
Avalanche
Report of a large avalanche near the Pine Creek Cookhouse last week in the Durr Chutes