Gunnison
SnowpackCrested Butte Avalanche Center · Jan 12, 2013 · Gunnison
Weather
Wx: It was freezing this morning when we left the trailhead at 9:15am but the solar radiation helped once we hit the bottom of the skin track. Overhead clouds off and on through the day, with no new precipitation coming in. New clouds were forming in the west then moving across the Elks in slow fashion, with sun intermittent the entire day. Even in the afternoon (on the way back to the cars on the valley floor), the valley seemed much colder than the ridge top. 10deg once we hit the bar. Snowpack: New snow on the ridge top varied from 0-2" in wind scoured locations to > 12" on wind slabs. The trees on the S side of slopes show no snow in the limbs, versus the trees on the NE side of slopes showing 2-4" in the limbs (wind). Skin track was variable but very consistent with these observations. New snow from this storm on the slopes we skied was 8" at least, skiing deeper than that to the valley floor.
Snowpack
Avy Activity: We punched a whole bunch of wind slabs and wind cornices this morning at ridge top , with very little in the way of results. We saw old and what appeared to be new avalanche activity on the E/NE aspect of Birthday Bowl, (skier's way left) which might have been new storm snow. We also saw crown lines on the NE (skier's waaay right) of Thanksgiving Bowl that looked new but might have been old? We skied 1x 35* slope below a large cornice, which had signs of significant prior avalanche activity, with no results across 7 skiers, and good snow all the way down. We skied 1x 38* slope (and mellowing) with 6 skiers, with prior avalanche activity evident, with no results across all 6 skiers and good snow all the way down. On both of these slopes, we saw no cracks beyond 1ft, heard no collapsing and saw no avalanche movement nor any significant sloughing. We also saw no activity when re-setting the return skin track, with nothing to note except limited areas of "garbage snow" that took both your pole and your ski to the ground, in the trees on the return track.