Gunnison

Snowpack

South aspects above treeline on Purple Mtn and Treasury Mtn: Snowpack consists of several layers of meltfreeze crust with faceted snow underneath. Felt one collapse near a ridgeline on basal facets where recent NE winds had loaded a windslab pocket. Other than near the ridgeline, we felt a slab was lacking and skied avalanche terrain without instabilities. The storm snow has settled to less than 4 inches and is bonded well to the previous melt-freeze crust. On a northwest aspect above treeline on Purple Mtn, snowpack is highly variable. In many places, the new year's eve windstorm stripped all snow and is now buried by 6" of new, settled powder. In other areas, a very hard slab persists above well developed facets and is also covered by the new settled powder. A snow profile in one of these pockets showed 8" depth hoar (~4mm, fist hard), 10" of windslab (knife hard), and 6" of decomposing fragments (four finger). ECTP 24, Q2 (PC) on the interface of depth hoar and windslab. We observed crowns and debris from several R1D1 storm slabs on NE aspect of Schuykill ridge that occured some time in the last few days. It appears that the storm slabs bonded better to above treeline surfaces (windcrusts and melt-freeze crusts) than faceted snow below treeline.