Sawatch

Avalanche

Spencer Herford · Apr 5, 2021 · Sawatch

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Weather

Few building to broken cloud cover. Moderately cold temps when starting at 0630.

Snowpack

Good freeze overnight on the top portion of the snow was found right from the parking lot at 11k. Supportable crust. As we crossed the 13k mark I poked around more in the snow and found a mostly supportable melt freeze crust approx 8cm thick on an east aspect. Below was finger hard dry snow for about 15cm, and another melt freeze crust was below that. This structure was very consistent through our route today which was mostly on east aspects. From the summit we noticed light wind transport when the wind would shift more northerly. I poked a bit at a north facing slope at 13700 and found a soft and dry layer of snow atop previous wind event interfaces.

Avalanche

Several small wet loose slides near rocks below treeline on north aspects above the mine near the winter th. None appeared to step down.