Gunnison
AvalancheBen Pritchett · Feb 20, 2022 · Gunnison
Weather
Cool, breezy morning, but air temperatures were climbing quickly.
Snowpack
A grab-bag of faceted surfaces. Some were normal, mid-winter faceted surfaces, and others were outrageously weak.
The weakest snow we found was near and below treeline in wind-sheltered northeast and east-facing terrain. Here you can still trigger long-running Dry Loose avalanches, and the these slopes will become dangerous early this week as new snow totals reach around 8 or 10 inches.
Alpine northerly-facing terrain is covered in plenty of weak snow, but these slopes will take more load to grow dangerous.
Southerly-facing terrain is capped by a variety of faceted crusts.
The weakest snow we found was near and below treeline in wind-sheltered northeast and east-facing terrain. Here you can still trigger long-running Dry Loose avalanches, and the these slopes will become dangerous early this week as new snow totals reach around 8 or 10 inches.
Alpine northerly-facing terrain is covered in plenty of weak snow, but these slopes will take more load to grow dangerous.
Southerly-facing terrain is capped by a variety of faceted crusts.
Avalanche
We pushed numerous Dry Loose avalanches in steep, north through east-facing wind-sheltered terrain below treeline. The couple of inches of settled recent snow seemed to prime these particular features, where they would collapse and run before I pushed on the steep part of a roll-over. It was almost like a close-proximity remote trigger Dry Loose avalanche - just an indication of how very weak the near-surface snow is going into this storm.