Aspen
SnowpackAndy Gaylord · Feb 21, 2012 · Aspen
Weather
Clearing out after the storm, moderate winds becoming light. Cold in the teens. Roughly 10 inches of new snow.
Snowpack
Pit at 10,800 feet revealed a much deeper Snowpack/Stronger than other areas of the Aspen Zone. HS roughly 175cm. Bottom 50cm consisted of large faceted grains. Midpack was quite strong about 1 finger hardness with some slight hardness changes in the top 30cm. CT 23 failure (I had to hit the column pretty hard) at the 50cm interface was Q1 and seemed to pop/drop off the column. ECTN. Other than the distinct hardness change 125cm from the surface the snowpack was well bonded and did not reveal any other distinct weak layers. We did not encounter any collapsing or crack in the areas we toured, but we witness signs of natural avalanche activity, primarily on easterly aspects at treeline and above some of theses were loose slides only involving the new snow, while another was much larger, about 150 meters across and running 800 feet to a bench. This slide was above treeline and ran bellow a cliff ban, it seemed to break into old snow layers. Bellow treeline there was natural slab avalanche in that involved the new snow and was roughly 12 inches deep and ran 150 feet down hill not quite to the bottom of a gully.