Gunnison

Snowpack

Toured up Slate River drainage to purple ridge and Baldy zone. Found highly variable degrees of wind-effect in the E'ly slopes in Purple Ridge zone, near TL. Some areas had non-reactive snow with nice, eroded surface conditions while small, more reactive wind-pillows were immediately adjacent. Observed some localized cracking on a thin 6-inch windslab near the surface but did not experience any other instability. Below TL some evidence of wind transport from Wednesday but mostly soft still and non-reactive. On more S'ly and SW'ly slopes in the Baldy zone, snow was less variable but supportability, not surface conditions, was the issue here. A variety of crusts and a recent thin windslab made for sometimes-stout and supportable crusts, other times non-supportable crusts on S'ly aspects. More SW aspects had largely wind-eroded surface with nice skiing conditions, but shallow. Experienced whumphing a few times on S'ly apsects near TL, and the culprit appeared to be a facet layer ~12 inches down, underlying a stout, pencil hard melt-freeze crust. This layer generated CT16 and ECTP18 test results with sudden failures. Observed numerous new natural sluffs and a small (R1.5/D1) slab on the E flanks of Schuykill and other E and NE aspects at the end of the day.