Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Mar 30, 2025 · Gunnison
Weather
Warm temperatures with a cool breeze keeping snow surfaces cool and moving new snow onto north and east-facing slopes.
Snowpack
The snowpack saw a better refreeze than I was expecting. All slopes I traveled on including near-treeline north-facing slopes have a thick melt-freeze crust underneath about 2 inches of new snow that was supportable to skis and boots. On south-facing slopes below about 30 cm of frozen melt-freeze crusts was homogenous melt forms down to the ground varying from 1F to 4F hard (on the hand hardness scale). The melt forms below the refrozen crusts were still wet and once I broke through the crust with a shovel boot pen easily went down to the ground. On north-facing slopes there were 2 obvious melt-freeze crusts in the upper 20 cm of the snowpack with evidence of water making it deeper. The upper weak layers on north-facing slopes (the persistent weak layers that were buried throughout March) were difficult to pick out as they are mostly homogenous with the overall upper snowpack. There are still clear signs of weak, faceted grains about 100 to 150cm below the snow surface on slopes that have not had avalanches yet this season but they are deeply buried under a thick slab and unreactive in snowpack tests. The most uncertainty lies in how deep water made it and what the snowpack structure looks like on the many repeat offender northwest, north, and northeast-facing avalanche paths (the slopes that avalanched multiple times this season).
Avalanche
Observed a few Loose Wet and Glide avalanches from this past week's warm up.