Aspen

Avalanche

Brian Lazar Colin Mitchell · Apr 12, 2017 · Aspen

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Weather

Any high clouds from last night moved out early in the morning, leaving perfectly clear skies, warm temps and light winds. Winds at ridgetop were stronger, but not mixing into the valleys.

Snowpack

Typical spring conditions, with melt forms top to bottom at the lower elevations, slowly transitioning to colder snow as we approached treeline. Near-treeline north and northeast facing slopes are still holding cold snow, and had powder snow conditions on the surface. Some faceting during recent clear nights has likely helped keep surface snow loose in these areas. Any other aspect in this elevation band had a well-developed melt/freeze crust and corn/wet snow on the surface by noon. The alpine terrain had a winter-like snowpack, with plenty of rock-hard windslabs and no melt-freeze crust or wet snow in the N and NE aspects we traveled. We did see some Loose Wet slides on nearby NW-W-S-SE-E slopes in the above treeline elevation band. They appeared to be confined to this past weekend's snow, and were all D1's

Avalanche

A small loose wet avalanche cycle appears to have happened on Monday or Tuesday.