Gunnison
AvalancheIan Fowler · Feb 3, 2022 · Gunnison
Weather
Cold temps, mostly clear skies. Light north winds were occasionally producing light drifting at ridgetop.
Snowpack
Felt comfortable moving through lots of complex avalanche terrain with minimal signs of instability apart from shallow sluffs. We encountered a few thin but hard drifts that produced localized cracking and/or collapses. I believe these formed a few days ago during the strong W/SW wind event. About 2? of fresh snow was evenly distributed across all aspects; we encountered a few minor drifts involving just the new snow onto southerly aspects that did not produce signs of instability.
Avalanche
Skier triggered numerous small, shallow sluffs on very steep slopes facing east to north aspects at all elevations. Sluffs were about 3? deep above treeline and entrained about 6? of faceted snow below treeline. Spotted one slightly larger wind slab on Mt. Afley that ran sometime in the past few days, D1 in size.