Aspen
Quick reportDylan Craaybeek · Feb 23, 2026 · Aspen
Weather
Unusually warm day with mostly clear sky (Few to Scattered) and occasional light westerly winds, but mostly calm. By the afternoon, temperatures were above freezing even near treeline.
Snowpack
The current snowpack is like nothing I have experienced before. The weak layers are unusually well-developed with chains of facets spanning the length of my crystal card and signs of advanced facets and depth hoar relatively high up in the snowpack. The slab, although relatively thin (around 8 to 16 inches), is connected across the terrain and consistently about 4F hard at the top and 1F hard at the base, and is composed of moist, small-grained rounds. Every meadow or open slope I crossed led to booming collapses and cracks propagating through relatively dense trees on all aspects facing west through north to east at all elevations. Snow surfaces were moist on north-facing slopes by the afternoon and wet on south-facing slopes with notable settlement cones on almost all vegetation.
Avalanche
The first open slope over 30 degrees that I encountered today was remotely triggered as I approached it from about 10 feet away. This avalanche, on a relatively small slope, then ran over the bench below it into steeper terrain lower down and sympathetically triggered numerous other avalanches that ran hundreds of feet snapping branches and small vegetation. A few hundred feet higher while walking along the ridge I got a big collapse that I didn't realize triggered an avalanche until I heard branches snapping a few seconds later hundreds of feet below me. This avalanche sympathetically triggered another D2 around 1000 feet from where I initially got the collapse. Near the summit of Green Mountain I got a rumbling collapse on the west side of the ridgeline and watched cracks travel hundreds of feet across low-angle terrain in front of me, then about 8 seconds later on the east-side of the ridgeline I noticed a rumbling collapse traveling back towards me shaking full grown trees, travel past me, then a few seconds later the collapse came back up behind me along the west-side of the ridgeline again. As I walked up and over the next knoll, I realized this triggered an avalanche with a crown face over 8 feet tall. Walking further along the ridgeline, I remotely triggered another avalanche about as big as the slope could go and grew large enough to snap a few trees about 4 inches in diameter. I have no doubt that I triggered numerous other avalanches on slopes that were too far away for me to clearly see crowns, especially on the west side of the ridgeline. I also observed several older avalanches that likely ran during the storm as well as a few recent avalanches that likely ran in the last 24 hours.