Gunnison

Snowpack

John MacKinnon · Mar 6, 2012 · Gunnison

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Weather

Winds began picking up in late morning from the SW and cloud cover gradually increased throughout the day. Observed blowing snow off summit ridge of Treasury. At 1 pm, Airtemp of +2.5 C and a Tsurf of -2.0 C on a north facing slope at 11,200 ft.

Snowpack

Northerly slopes still held dry snow while anything that dipped slightly east had a faint melt-freeze crust on the surface. No signs of instability while skinning up but did find a variable below treeline snowpack. Exposed areas had discontinuous buried wind slabs with about 30 cm of heavy (but still dry) snow on top. Steep treed areas had a very weak snowpack that was mostly shallow. Got one large rumbling collapse while skiing an ENE facing slope that was pushing 40 degrees. My ski partner felt it travel upslope from me to him--about 15 meters uphill! Observed numerous old slides from last week's cycle. See below for details: