Gunnison
AvalancheEvan Ross · Dec 9, 2025 · Gunnison
Weather
Mostly calm to light winds on Skooks ridge. Moderate winds in the more expsed area above Thanksgiving. Warm temps. cloud cover: broken; wind loading: previous
Snowpack
Southerly facing slopes were getting cooked in this area. The notes below are all for northerly facing slopes, with weak faceted snow near the ground and more recent snow forming various slabs above. The snowpack is still noisy. The slab is losing strength and its ability to produce shooting cracks vs very localized cracking. Up to 10,500ft, the snowpack averaged an HS of 45 to 50cm. Ski pen remains in the upper 1/3 of the snowpack, though it is easy to push your skis through the slab if one was present. The slab was about 10-20cm of 4F. The top 10cm was F hard. 37-40+ degree terrain often lacked or had less of a slab. Along the ridgeline from 10,700ft to 11,100, the HS averaged 50 to 60cm. HS increased to ~70cm on 11,400ft terrain features near the ridgeline. Same story with the slab losing strength, and notes about steep terrain often having less of a slab. Collapses and shooting cracks had a better chance of extending across terrain features right near the ridgeline. Stability assessment in this area was interrupted by the vast number of slopes that had already avalanched or were likely to have previously collapsed and cracked. . The snowpack is still noisy. Far more collapses than shooting cracks.
Avalanche
The loto winners are the slopes that hadn't previously avalanched around 12/6. The main avalanche paths from 1st bowl on out to Runaway Ski had all avalanched, mostly wall to wall in the start zones. The main avalanche paths produced large avalanches. Smaller avalanche terrain features were very difficult to identify if they had previously avalanched until you got right in the terrain. Similarly, they had often seen previous avalanche activity. Many avalanches ran early in the storm and were small in size, making it more difficult to detect that they had occurred.