Aspen
AvalancheBrian Lazar · Jan 4, 2020 · Aspen
Weather
Day started cool in valley bottoms but quickly warmed with sun. By mid day, it was quite warm, skies were broken with high clouds, and westerly winds really started to kick up even in exposed areas below treeline.
Snowpack
Thin snowpack in this area. Snow surface was moist on all sunny slopes by mid day and surface crusts now exist on all sun-exposed slopes. Colder, shadier slopes have about 100 to 130 cm of mostly weak snow. Southerly aspect snowpack depths are 70-80cm with two prominent crust-facet combinations. The upper combination is about 10cm deep underneath the recent snowfall. The lower combination is a thick (7cm) crust from mid-November down ~60cm on top of depth hoar at the ground. These layers would easily fail but not propagate in large column tests as the slab would fracture. If you found a more wind-affected area the slabs would likely propagate on one or both of these layers. The shift in wind direction to the west southwest found new fetches and led to a surprisingly amount of drifting snow.
Avalanche
One old storm slab avalanche from around the New Year's storm. Some small loose wet avalanches running out of steep rocky terrain on southwest-facing slopes by late in the day (D1s)