Gunnison

Avalanche

Zach Guy · Nov 10, 2021 · Gunnison

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Weather

Weather: Light snowfall. Light to moderate northwest winds with short periods of drifting snow.

Snowpack

Snowpack: 6? to 8? of new storm snow over a generally weak and faceted snowpack (.5 – 1.5mm facets) mixed with a few crusts on more easterly aspects. Fresh drifts up to 2 feet thick. We noted consistent collapsing and shooting cracks up to 50 feet on every wind loaded feature, along with some shooting cracks where winds have stiffened the snow surface. These all appeared to be failing on the storm interface. In wind-protected areas, we noted only minor cracking. Stability test in a wind-sheltered slope showed no propagation.

Avalanche

Avalanches: A handful of natural activity ran during last night’s snowfall, mostly small, with one longer running D2. We remotely triggered a couple of small pockets of wind slab from about 30 feet away, and remotely triggered a larger D1.5 wind slab that was about 50 feet wide and ran about 600 feet over rocks.