Sawatch
AvalancheIan Hoyer ยท Dec 11, 2016
Weather
Ridgeline winds were strong out of the west, but interestingly, valley winds were blowing out of the southeast. Skies cleared up and snowfall tailed off just before noon.
Snowpack
Traveled on below and near treeline slopes, W-N-E. ~12 inches of new snow overnight. Total snow depths ranged from 60-90 cm, with some deeper drifts. 10-20 ft shooting cracks on thin (5-10 cm) layer of facets at the ground on all slopes with wind affect, even below treeline. Lots of drifting snow from west winds, even near treeline. Even with this drifting, only very soft slabs (4finger at the hardest). Aside from drift depths, snowpack was very consistent on all aspects.
Avalanche
Observed a number of fresh, small soft slab on NE-E aspects, near and above treeline. All were small and looked to be very soft slabs, with limited propagation. They looked to mostly consist of storm snow, but many of them failed right at the ground.