Gunnison

Avalanche

Zach Guy · Feb 24, 2016 · Gunnison

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Weather

Clear skies, cool temps, light to moderate NW winds at ridgetop. Small plumes on peaks this morning and no transport the rest of the day.

Snowpack

1" of new snow over variable surface of stout crusts to thin crusts to chalky wind drifts to near surface facets. On a windloaded SSE aspect above treeline, HS was 135 cm and there was 15-20 cm of frozen, pencil hard crusts at the surface (MFpc), over a faceting slab, with percolation columns reaching 30 cm deep. No signs of instability on various aspects/elevations except for some minor cracking and pizza box sized wind slabs in a windloaded gulley, 2-3" deep on the dusty crust layer.

Avalanche

Fresh looking cornice fall on Scarp Ridge into Redwell Basin (NE aspect ATL). I haven't looked at that path in about a week, but my guess is it fell in the past 3 days. It looks like the cornice initially gouged to the ground through weak and incohesive snow, but encountered more structure further downslope and pulled out a relatively narrow pocket of persistent slab, estimated 30 feet wide and a few feet deep. (SS-NC-R1-D2-O).