Aspen
SnowpackColin Mitchell · Jan 15, 2017 · Aspen
Weather
High thin clouds covered more than half of the sky most of the day. Fog lifted around 9 am. Very light westerly wind in the alpine, calm at lower elevations. Warm and pleasant day overall, plenty of solar getting through. Valley fog in the West Elks around Paonia and Kebler pass lasted all day.
Snowpack
Deep and evenly distributed up until treeline. The snow was getting a little heavy by the end of the day BTL, but still cold, no crust developing yet. Some faceting in surface layers gave the snow a grainy feeling and the first 20 cm or so was F hard and unconsolidated. Above treeline snow was highly wind-affected. Anywhere west or south exposed to the wind was stripped almost to the ground, with a mixed bag of surface conditions, windboard, large-grained facets, grass, and a little bit of pow hanging on in more sheltered areas. Lee aspects were loaded with hardslabs. Large drifts existed all over the terrain. One of these windslabs produced a deep collapse that propagated to the edges of the slab (maybe 100' diameter). On this same slope, we also triggered a small fresh windslab composed of yesterday's snow. Glide cracks were observed on steep, rocky terrain on the south face of Marble Peak, and throughout the east-facing terrain visible from the Marble road. One old debris pile was visible in the gully below Alley Peak, otherwise, no signs of activity in the area outside of what has already been reported.