Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Mar 24, 2025 · Aspen
Weather
Warm but very windy morning keeping things feeling cold above 12,000 feet. Broken to overcast sky cover on Bald Mountain until about 10:00 when the sky started clearing and the wind died down to a light breeze with moderate gusts.
Snowpack
The wind was doing a very effective job of keeping snow surfaces cool on all windward slopes with southeast and west-facing slopes still holding dry snow on a frozen crust but wind-sheltered slopes, even north-facing slopes below 12,000 feet that were wind-sheltered, had moist to wet snow surfaces with liquid water starting to percolate through the upper snowpack. Southeast-facing slopes had several slabs of dense, wind-packed rounds with a variety of crusts in between them until you get to the large-grained, dry-depth hoar making up the bottom 1/3 of the snowpack. There is a chance as the crusts on top of the depth hoar melt they just soak the depth hoar causing Loose Avalanches and refreezing at night rather than triggering Wet Slabs without a cohesive slab on top of the weak layer but there is a lot of uncertainty here. On high-elevation west and mid-elevation northwest-facing slopes there are several thick melt-freeze crusts in the upper snowpack with a cohesive mid-pack slab resting on top of similar dry, large-grained depth hoar (up to 10mm). These are the slopes I would be most worried about Wet Slabs come Wednesday and Thursday or even starting today around rock outcrops, cliffs, or other thermal bodies later in the day.
Avalanche
Observed a few small Wind Slabs from the last few days, several small Loose Wet avalanches, and got a closer look at the recent Willoughby Ridge avalanche from last week.