Sawatch
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Apr 27, 2021 · Sawatch
Weather
Winds were mostly calm all the way to 13k feet except for when a few snow squalls came through. These squalls were intermittent through the day and didn't amount to any accumulation. Sky cover started to decrease with plenty of sun by 3 PM.
Snowpack
There was just a trace of snow on generally firm but warm surfaces. The only place we did not find a surface melt-freeze crust was on north above treeline. The upper snowpack on north contains two weak layers in the top 45 cm. A shallowly buried faceted layer near buried dust and a deeper (35 cm deep) layer of facets sandwiched between a one-finger hard and pencil-hard slab. This was the exact structure I found near an avalanche in Iowa Gulch about a week ago. Although we didn't get any propagation in an ECT we decided against skinning up a steep northerly slopes and stuck to ascending stout melt-freeze crusts instead. Its hard to say this structure is only where wind drifted. But at the same time, it is stubborn, on its way to unreactive. No signs of any wet instability and overall no obvious signs of instability.
Avalanche
Many recent Loose Wet avalanches that likely ran on April 25. Too many to count. Mostly D1 to D1.5. A few ran close to 1000 feet but most were much smaller. All avalanches observed were above treeline.