Gunnison

Snowpack

Anonymous · Dec 16, 2012 · Gunnison

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Weather

Went to Coney's Saturday morning. Weather was snowy, about 1 cm / hour most of the day with very little wind with moderate temps of 25-30 degrees.

Snowpack

Dug a pit in same area as Thursday. Saw a crack in the snow that propagated about 15 feet at the windloaded start zone skier's left of the main bowl. In the pit we found about 30 cm new storm snow, and approx 70-80 cm overall with 15 cm buried facets on the ground. Performed column test. New storm snow failed about 30 cm deep on the first tap CT1 with a poor quality shear Q3. The previous storm's snow and the surface facets failed at CT8 with a Q2 shear (clean, but could be way cleaner). Surprised by these findings, as on Thursday it took a little more work to get the surface facets and the older snow to fail. The area we investigated did not slide during the main bowl avalanche earlier this week. Decided not to ski left of the main bowl. Instead, skied main bowl with about a foot of new snow resting on the bedsurface of the slide earlier this week. Did not see any cracking or avalanche activity during a few laps throughout the day (10 - 2:30).