Aspen

Avalanche

Colin Mitchell · Feb 9, 2016 · Aspen

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Weather

Completely clear skies and light winds. Warm in the sun, but not doing much melting or wetting of the snow surface on northerly aspects.

Snowpack

Widespread surface hoar up to 11,700'. Average height was around 5-8 mm, but some sheltered areas had crystals that were 2 cm tall. Last week's snow has settled into a slab that gets harder with depth. The upper 20-30 cm was F hard and very faceted. The slab stiffened to 1F+ by the old snow interface. Nice skiing, but noisy! We dug a test pit on a NW aspect at TL. A thin layer of facets was still visible at the interface between the recent snow from last week and older snow, but was not reactive to tests. 2 CTs produced no results, also ECTX,and ECTN29 at the old snow/new snow interface. HS 210 cm. No signs of instability observed during our tour.

Avalanche

Loose snow slides were starting to run on sunny aspects.