Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Nov 30, 2023 · Aspen
Weather
Cold morning with clear skies and calm winds all morning. Increasing cloud coverage and wind throughout the afternoon. Warming temperatures throughout the day staying below freezing above about 10,000 feet.
Snowpack
All slopes aside from wind-loaded terrain features faceted to F-hard on the hand hardness scale throughout the entire snowpack down to the ground. Southerly-facing slopes hold about three melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) with well-developed weak facets in between each MFcr. Collapsing with associated cracking was observed upon approaching any and every wind-loaded slope. These wind-loaded terrain features won't take much load before we see avalanches failing across the individual terrain features. Elsewhere, the snow surface is very weak and will not take much load but there is no slab so any avalanches will likely be small as the new snow settles and begins developing a new slab. Although the slabs may not break wide they can still easily entrain all the old weak snow down to the ground and run farther than you might expect.
Avalanche
One small slab avalanche triggered by a bighorn sheep on a northwest-facing slope in a gully-like feature surrounded by rocks.