Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Dec 6, 2023 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Cold clear morning turning into a warm sunny day with a light westerly breeze along the ridgeline too light to transport any snow.
Snowpack
Northwest through north to east-facing slopes throughout this area have a very similar snowpack about 50-70cm deep. The top half of the snowpack here is composed of two upper layers from last weekend's storm then the wind event that followed. The two mid-November storms formed a mostly homogenous layer of F-hard (on the hand hardness scale) of facets and this rests on top of the October facets, most of which is developed into depth hoar. This area has two melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) at the top of the depth hoar layer with snowpack tests failing in between the MFcr's. Steep northerly slopes south of Williams Peak failed naturally, most likely last weekend during the storm, as evidenced by shooting cracks across the slopes and deformed snow surface but the ground here appears to be too rough with too much vegetation and rocks for those slopes to fully avalanche. Sunny slopes were melting rapidly today as south and southwest-facing slopes now have less than about 5cm of snow on them at this elevation. The snow surface on east through south to west was very wet by this afternoon and will likely refreeze tonight developing a thick MFcr on the current snow surface on these aspects. A significant layer of surface hoar was observed on all shady slopes without dense tree coverage.
Avalanche
No avalanches were observed due to the rough terrain and generally shallow snowpack more than the unstable snow.