Sangre de Cristo

Avalanche

Mark Raymond · Nov 27, 2014 · Sangre de Cristo

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Weather

4-6" new snow, heavy wind

Snowpack

mostly wind deposit. 1-2 feet of heavy drifted snow with 6" soft wind slab on top. 2-3mm round grain ice on the ground. ECTP3-5 fracturing underneath the top layer. Any real snow deposit was due to wind. I was also poking around the wet mountains this last weekend and found very similar conditions with maybe an extra 3-6" of fresh.

Avalanche

Soft Slabs 6" deep were consistently propagating and running on test slopes (aspect N,NE) around 35 degrees steep. The bottom hard wind layer wasn't reactive at the time. The wind was really moving snow around and tracks were filling back in within 10 minutes or so. Thanks guys