Gunnison

Snowpack

Zach Guy · Dec 3, 2012 · Gunnison

Weather

Clear skies midmorning developing to overcast in the afternoon. Light winds.

Snowpack

Storm snow depths ranged from 1" at valley bottoms to 5" at higher elevations with windloaded pockets up to 10"; all quite dense and slabby. On southerly aspects, the storm snow is bonded well to crusts and we saw no signs of instability. The surface snow was moist midday. On northerly aspects, the new snow was very reactive on the layer of near surface facets that it buried. Most slopes steeper than 35 degrees near and above treeline on aspects N to NE to E slab-avalanched under ski cuts. Crown heights ranged between 4" and 10", averaging 6". Most noteable were three natural avalanches, several slides that we remotely triggered from up to 200' away, as well as a skier cut pocket that pulled out a 200' wide slab downslope and traveled over 1000 vertical feet. We estimated the debris pile to be up to 8-10' deep. We only observed one pocket that stepped down through older layers, roughly 30' wide and 18" deep.