Sawatch

Avalanche

Drew Gibson Jason Konigsberg · Nov 19, 2022 · Sawatch

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Weather

Clear, calm and cold. Slight breeze on ridge crest from the west.

Snowpack

Below treeline: The snowpack is shallow and mostly faceted. We traveled up through north facing trees and found an average snow depth of 40cm with deeper pockets. --- Above treeline on east aspect- Previous wind drifting has filled dish like terrain features and cross-loaded some gullies. The thickness of the wind slab is variable, some places it's ~10 cm thick and other places 40 cm thick. Where we dug our pit, the wind packed snow was the majority of the structure. Small areas of cracking and collapsing were observed. We triggered the collapses from shallow, rocky areas.--- Side stepping through thin snow cover and rocks, we got a collapse and shooting cracks. The flanks and staunch wall were visible but the slab did not release. The slab was only about 8 cm thick. The height of snow in the area was 20 cm to 40 cm, mostly facets, with a 8cm pencil hard layer on the surface.

Avalanche

A few small Wind Slab avalanches were observed in the Buckeye B slide path. They were likely more than 24 hours old.