Gunnison
SnowpackPublic Public · Dec 15, 2011 · Gunnison
Weather
11:00am at the TH @ 9,400ft. skies were overcast. precip: S -1. moderate N winds were blowing down the valley. HST 12cm 12:30pm near ridgetop @ 10,900ft. NE aspect. Broken skies. Precip: S -1. Moderate W winds. HST 23cm. Ski pen 35cm. Some light wind effect in the storm snow.
Snowpack
On the ridgetop very light wind slabs had formed from SW-W winds. Small cracks would propagate 30cm from skis. On the 3rd turn on the NE face of Conies Bowl on a 34° slope poorly defined cracks propagated 3m, but no avalanching occurred. In the same location a second skier was able to trigger a D1 sluff that entrained new snow and old weak snow. 2 other small sluffs were triggered at 10,120ft on a steep roll. These ran to the ground. In general the storm snow lacked enough cohesion to be a slab. On these NE slopes there was very little difference in hardness between the storm and the underlying facets. They were both in the F to F- range. On E aspects in Conies the old snow surface was an extremely slippery crust, with overlying surface hoar in places, and then storm snow on top. This combination made for challenging and slippery skinning. A few quick tests showed that the low -density storm snow wasn’t that well bonded to the old snow surface, but it also would not stay together as a slab.