Gunnison
AvalancheCBAC Forecaster · Jan 25, 2024 · Gunnison
Snowpack
Crazy quiet, and not what I was expecting. Covered a lot of terrain and only got a few shooting cracks and collapses. Both were isolated in distribution. Once I was off the road around the Reno cutoff, the snowpack was supportable to boots. As I climbed higher it became hard to punch through the slab. The riding conditions were great. The snow surface is soft and the snowpack was surprisingly supportable in most locations. My first couple of test slopes were E and NE facing at 10,000ft. I knew these had an incredibly weak snowpack in early January. The slab was 60 to 70cm thick here, with an HS of 115 to 125cm. The Slab was 1F hard. The Jan 5th interface was 4F hard, before becoming F hard lower down. The faceted grains were still well developed and 3mm in size at the interface. ECTP H SP. These slopes had previously collapsed and despite some effort, they didn't produce any more shooting cracks or collapse again. The westerly facing slopes right near this area had a shallower HS, but still generally the same structure, and also didn't produce much for collapses or shooting cracks. Along the double top ridge above 11,400ft. The general easterly side of the ridge or lee side of the ridge held hard slabs under the soft surface snow that I couldn't punch through. I didn't bother digging knowing that the Jan 5th interface was very wind effected in the area prior to getting buried. There may have been a sweet just below the old wind effect and lower than I was on those slopes. The general westerly and windward side of the ridge held a much more variable snowpack. Under the soft surface snow, there were old hard wind wales right next to areas with a punchy-weak snowpack. The skis would be on the ground, back on top of a hard slab, then randomly back on the ground again. Some of those hard wales collapsed, though I rarely observed shooting cracks. If I could have triggered an avalanche somewhere, this would have been the most likely place. Perhaps slightly lower down where the slabs become more uniform. Southerly-facing slopes around 11,000ft had a soft crust just below the inch of new snow. While I didn't produce much for collapses or shooting cracks today, many of the slopes I traveled through had old cracks from one of the HIGH danger loading periods earlier in January.
Avalanche
The visibility and lighting weren't great. From what I could see, there wasn't a notable avalanche cycle during the earlier January HIGH danger events. There were some avalanches out there, but not what I expected. Perhaps much of the old avalanche activity was small and has already blended back into the terrain. The large to very large persistent slabs that were previously documented in Brush Creek were still plainly visible for context.