Sawatch

Avalanche

John Mackinnon ยท Feb 22, 2014

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Weather

Overcast skies, chilly temps (-5c at 1500), moderate westerly winds and light blowing snow below treeline. Westerly winds picked up as the afternoon progressed, and the amount of blowing snow increased as well. Light snow (S-1) began around 1400 and continued until 1600. Precipitation particles were rimed.

Snowpack

We toured on a variety of aspects below treeline in the Evans Gulch area. We saw lots of previous evidence of blowing snow and wind transport below treeline. We observed cornices on gully features and tailings piles, pillows, drifts up to 180 cm on easterly aspects, and areas of sastrugi and bare ground on west facing slopes. Previous strong winds seemed to have been out of the SW,W and NW. Profiles on a NNE aspect in a gladed meadow revealed an average HS of 120 cm. The bottom 50 cm were depth hoar and large facets. They were showing some sintering but still remained F hard.We observed 55 cm of late January and early-mid February storm snow sitting on the Jan. 27th surface hoar layer. This layer continues to round and decompose but we could still see some preserved surface hoar crystals. We did not get any test results on this layer for the second week in a row. The past storm snow has settled into a 1F slab but the most recent storm snow is still F hard. The top 20 cm looks like it may have undergone some faceting during this week's cold snap. Compression Tests produced repeatable "drops" or sudden collapses on the DH layer at 25 cm above the ground.

Avalanche

We did not observe any avalanches today.