Sawatch
AvalancheBrian Lazar Colin Mitchell · May 10, 2017 · Aspen
Weather
Mostly clear skies early in the morning. Sky was broken by 11, with clouds moving in from the south. A little cooler than the last couple of days, but solar made it feel warmer than it was when we had sun.
Snowpack
Last night's snow had little effect on conditions. Recent snows have melted and consolidated to about 6" of wet grains with a couple of thin crusts, topped by a centimeter or two of moist snow from last night. We experienced a few small collapses from one of the crusts in these upper layers, but little in the way of propagation (maybe 10 ft across). The weak layer was wet, unconsolidated snow under the crust, only a couple of inches below the snow surface. Rain yesterday afternoon triggered many loose slides in the Marble area, but we did not see evidence of this on the pass. No new activity or signs of instability were observed. Some evidence of cornices calving off chunks with more of this likely with the next warm up over the next few days.
Avalanche
Many small loose wet avalanches were observed on a variety of aspects, but none appeared to have run more recently than 5/7