Gunnison

Avalanche

(Public) Crested Butte Avalanche Center · Dec 19, 2020 · Gunnison

View on map

Weather

Weather: Sunny and felt cold. Clouds and spitting snow moved in around 3. Mostly calm with sporadic gusting up high.

Snowpack

Snowpack: 5” or so of new snow from yesterday. It appeared that the wind hadn’t moved much snow into the bowl in the previous 24 hours. Oddly, on this cold December 19th I had snow clumping to my pole baskets and the snow surfaces was wet on S/SE. When descending around 3:30 the wet surface snow had refrozen into a legitimate crust. I didn’t expect that today! If nothing else, what’s on my mind is that snow/weather/avalanches can always surprise us. In big ways and small. Stay safe.

Avalanche

Two small wind slabs in Red Lady Bowl. One appeared to have been natural and one was from a skier intentionally kicking off cornices.