Gunnison
AvalancheBen Pritchett · Apr 7, 2020 · Gunnison
Weather
Hot temps, light winds, few clouds.
Snowpack
Found a fragile continental snowpack quickly becoming inundated with melt water. Very weak depth hoar grains were still visibly crisp and striated, but only fist hard and wet. At around 9400' at lake level, the snowpack was unsupportive to ski travel, standing on the ground, thigh deep. Over snow-travel was not viable. The upper foot of the snowpack still had frozen ice columns (vertical) and lenses (horizontal) which gave it structure and stiffness in some spots, but not enough consistent support to move around without cratering to the bottom of the snowpack.
Avalanche
Many Loose Wet avalanches gouging to the ground below treeline on a variety of aspects, some of which ran today, some yesterday. One Wet Slab avalanche hit Taylor River Road on the afternoon of April 6th.