Sawatch
AvalancheAndrea Tupy · Jan 25, 2021 · Sawatch
Weather
Before noon, the sky was obscured with steady moderate west winds and S1 snow. The snow let up midday and then stopped shortly after noon. The sky became partially cloudy and the winds decreased to light westerly winds with moderate gusts. It remained cold, in the single digits F, throughout the day.
Snowpack
The winds from both east and west have stripped the ridges above treeline with rocks and vegetation visible. Below ridgeline, near tree line, on the south aspect of Gondola Bowl the snowpack was shallow, unconsolidated and lacked a supportive layer. From ridgeline to about 10 to 20 meters below the ridgeline on the north and east aspects the wind has packed in firm, pencil-hard layers that is a meter to 1.3 meters deep over 55 cm of 4F hard facets to the ground. About 20 to 30 cm of recent soft snow lies on the top of the pencil-hard layers. No signs of instability were observed in relation to this snowpack that was up to 2 meters deep. The deep firm snow diminished about 15 to 20 meters below ridgeline on the east side near tree line. Here is were about 20cm of precipitation particles lie on top of a 3cm 1 finger layer below which is a loose, 5 cm layer of near surface facets. This was the layer of failure in ECT8 and the adjacent avalanche in North Fooses.
Avalanche
North Fooses east-southeast aspect near treeline went remotely from my digging in firm snow above it. R2-D2 on near surface facets 26cm down. The bed surface was old snow leaving much of the faceted base layers we've dealt with all season on the slope.