Front Range
AvalancheAustin DiVesta · Dec 4, 2022 · Front Range
Weather
Mostly sunny today with light winds at the trailhead. Around 1:00pm winds and clouds started to increase from the west. Winds continued to move snow throughout the day.
Snowpack
Below treeline continues to increase the total snow height. We found snow ranging from 30cm to 70cm. This snowpack is mostly recent snow with old, weak snow towards the bottom. If you were to take a ski off, you would sink to the ground. As we continued to move up towards Broome Hut, almost all slopes held continuous snow, even the more southeast and south-facing slopes. We observed recent snow drifting below the Second Creek Headwall under the ridgeline. Any wind-affected slopes started to become stiffer throughout the day or were already hollow underfoot. We investigated a recent large avalanche that someone triggered. The crown of this avalanche was 90cm ranging to almost two meters in wind-drifted areas. At our crown profile, we found a total snow height of 140cm. We found a thick stiff slab formed by strong winds resting on top of a weak 8cm faceted layer. The slab ranged from Pencil to Knife minus on the hand hardness scale, while the weak faceted layer was Fist hard. An Extended Column Test produced hard propagating results (ECTP25 at 48cm) on this weak, faceted layer. This avalanche stepped down to the ground in some places. Exiting Second Creek, we observed an avalanche in the Second Creek Headwall while we were up past the hut. This avalanche broke on a similar aspect and in similar conditions as the older avalanche
Avalanche
This avalanche was previous recorded https://classic.avalanche.state.co.us/caic/obs/obs_report.php?obs_id=72471