Front Range

Avalanche

Joey Thompson · Jan 18, 2016 · Front Range

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Weather

WX- overcast all day with cold air temps(-10c) winds were strong with gusts all day out of the W-NW, it was snowing pretty good with s1 with rates into the S2 at times. Worth noting, a lot of loading on the easterly aspects.

Snowpack

Snpx reveled 50cm of new snow medium density on top of a weak layer of near surface facets that formed on 01/13 in the upper portion of the snow pack, overall showing moderate CT test scores with propagation very likely in our large column tests. The Basil Facet layer deep in the snpx was stubborn un responsive.

Avalanche

AVX--We came upon an avalanche that was human triggered yesterday off the summer trail heading into Chaos Drainage. The Avx propagated pretty far around 400 ft and covered a bit of the summer trail. SS-AS-R4D2- I. Not sure if it was triggered on purpose or on accident. We didn't travel up to the deepest part of the crown and noticed that it was 50cm to 90cm deep aprox. We saw it from the trail, skiing out from where were running our CMS AIARE 2 course. Also worth noting we had numerous shooting cracks (9) while traveling up to our site to dig, the cracks shot out as far as 15 feet, we pulled over to investigate the instability and dug.