Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Feb 10, 2025 · Aspen
Weather
Mostly overcast with on and off very light snow and consistent westerly winds blowing snow along the ridgeline. It did not snow more than half an inch throughout the day.
Snowpack
The notable elevation band where north-facing slopes change drastically is about 10,500 to 10,700. Below this elevation band, even north-facing slopes saw dramatic melting with moist to wet facets and melt forms making up most of the snowpack and melt-freeze crusts on the old snow surface prior to the new snow. Above this elevation band, there are no signs of melting, no melt-freeze crusts, and the facets are very well-developed and very weak. Near the ridgeline, the same aspects have a mix of weak faceted grains and a layer of P hard (on the hand hardness scale) wind-packed rounds below the new snow. The new snow seemed to be bonding well to the layer of wind-packed rounds on wind-effected slopes. On more wind-sheltered slopes where the new snow rests on well-developed facets, I got a mix of non-propagating failures and propagating failures in extended column tests depending on how thick the overlying slab of new snow was but it always failed on less than 2 taps. The threshold for getting a propagating failure in extended column tests seemed to be the overlying slab being at least 4F- hard and at least 8 inches thick, which I only found on one slope all day. Southeast-facing slopes had a very supportable, thick melt-freeze crust and the new snow was developing into a thin melt-freeze crust creating difficult ski conditions on all south-facing slopes. Most south and southwest-facing slopes below 11,000 feet melted back to bare ground with patches of discontinuous snow coverage and the new snow from the last couple of days was mostly resting on bare ground.
Avalanche
Triggered a few small Loose Dry avalanches on very steep, north-facing slopes that only had about 2 or 3 inches of new snow on very weak facets.