Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Dec 31, 2024 · Aspen
Weather
Beautiful, mostly sunny morning with clouds and wind rolling in around 2:00 in the afternoon with light snow and moderate west wind throughout the rest of the day.
Snowpack
The new slab is thinner than the West Elk Mountains forecast zone and even over by McClure Pass but equally as reactive. Below around 10,500 feet the slab was not supportable to skis but we could still trigger slope scale collapses. Once we got above 10,500 feet the slab was mostly supportable and cracking and collapsing were much more prominent, this is where we could remotely trigger avalanches. The slab was mostly composed of well-bounded, small rounded grains with several decomposing fragmented particles still visible, especially towards the top of the slab. Similar to the Thanksgiving storm the slab seems to have bonded to a thin (<5cm) layer of facets that was likely a couple of small storms around December 23. Below this layer is a layer of well-developed facets averaging 2mm in size with some much larger. The rest of the snowpack below the weak layer of concern is a combination of facets and depth hoar that all appear to be fairly well bonded and at least partially rounded.
Avalanche
Remotely triggered a few avalanches on small terrain features that broke about as big as possible for those small slopes. Around 11,000 feet we remotely triggered a large avalanche from the ridgeline that sympathetically triggered two more large avalanches spanning over a thousand feet across the slope.