Gunnison

Snowpack

Zach Guy · Dec 9, 2011 · Gunnison

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Weather

Light Winds from the NW. Clear sky.

Snowpack

SE facing bowl of Mt. Bellview was scoured, shallow (<40cm) and all faceted. Good rock skiing. South facing bowl has a nasty combination of stiff windslab over a thin layer of facets (~1cm) over the melt freeze crust that was buried December 3rd. Despite being buried by a thin, mostly benign windslab (~8cm, up to 25cm just below lee ridges, mostly supportable), the facet layer has a lot of energy and propagation potential. Most of the south facing slope already avalanched on this layer a few days ago with thin slabs propagating 10 to 40 meters. For future storms, I would watch out for this layer on similar slopes that haven't cleaned out. Lower elevations near treeline have no windslab, just the recrystallizing powder on the same sun crust.