Gunnison

Quick report

Ben Pritchett · Mar 10, 2026 · Gunnison

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Weather

Warm, breezy, and clear.

Snowpack

We experienced minor cracking on forested, shady east and northeast-facing roadbanks in Tellurium Creek above 11,000 feet, but saw cracking no where else on our tour. Throughout the day we found a very simple snowpack structure with a single slab over depth hoar grains, or melted-out versions of that same set up. The deep areas were close to 3 feet deep. In most places the frozen ice lenses in the upper snowpack made the slab strong enough to marginally hold a snowmobile. Thinner snowpack areas were melted out or melted down to a thin stack of crusts on the ground. Surprisingly we were able to drive to the turnoff for Pieplant.

Avalanche

We saw no fresh avalanches, but we saw several older Wet Slab avalanches in the Taylor Park area a handful of D3 avalanches in the Elk Range northwest of Taylor Pass.