Gunnison
SnowpackBen Pritchett · Apr 10, 2019 · Gunnison
Weather
Squally spring weather. Pre-frontal winds before the precipitation did not move any snow. Precip rate and wind speed picked up w/ frontal passage early afternoon as the winds turned west. Light drifting and enough spindrift to make conditions unpleasant (and photographs not in the cards), but just not enough snow to dangerous build slabs. Picked up a few hours of productive snowfall mid afternoon, but totals ended up at the low end of forecast amounts (~3" near Paradise Divide) by late afternoon.
Snowpack
Dust on crust. Actually, found fresh desert southwest dust from prefrontal winds on the crust buried on 4/10 and in the bottom of the new storm snow. By mid afternoon, the storm produced 2-3" of dense snow that was on the verge of Loose Wet avalanching on steeper sunny slopes as the sun poked out. (Report from another party on Mt. Axtell found fast running easy to trigger Loose Wet avalanches, D1-1.5's). On Baldy, the deepest drift observed above treeline on NE-E-SE was 5". These certainly got deeper after we left, but probably not by much as the new snow was pressing into snow dune textures more than transporting. Snow surfaces refroze before snow fell, so bond between old surface and new snow was slick, but the slab was lacking. Dug on NE aspect near treeline and found a consistent wetting front down about 10cm, with ice lenses frozen in dry snow down 40cm. These slopes or anything higher or shadier has not had any significant influx of water yet. Wet Slab avalanches still possible when we get a significant melt event near and above treeline.