Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Nov 22, 2022 · Aspen
Weather
Cold morning (14F in Carbondale at 8:00) quickly warming to above freezing temperatures by 11:00 on Aspen Mountain. Sky coverage between Few and Scattered and Calm wind with an occasional Light westerly gust.
Snowpack
Facet Factory! Every slope on the northern half of the compass that showed clear signs of faceting throughout the entirety of the snowpack. West and northwest slopes have a couple of decomposing melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) buried below the surface with facets (FC) on top, in-between, and below the crusts decomposing crusts. Near-surface facets (FCsf) on these slopes can easily sluff on top of the upper crust buried 10-20cm below the snow surface. North to northeast through east slopes are facets top to bottom. It will take a steeper slope to trigger a Loose Dry avalanche on these slopes but if you do it will likely entrain the entire snowpack and could easily grow large enough to knock you off your feet. The few crystals that were rounded grains (RG) prior to this cold, dry stretch now show sharp corners and long kinetic growth branches in the direction of the preferential water vapor flow showing how fast the snowpack faceted throughout. The old November 2 FCsf layer is the most well-developed layer of facets showing obvious chains of large depth hoar (DH) averaging 2mm and some as large as 5mm. Some northerly slopes were stripped to the ground by the northerly winds last week. Southerly slopes were melting and held mostly discontinuous snow coverage near and below the treeline.
Avalanche
Observed several D1 Loose Dry avalanches on the 5-Fingers ridgeline and further down all on easterly slopes.