Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Mar 7, 2024 · Aspen
Weather
Scattered to broken cloud coverage with light westerly winds but mostly a calm and warm day. The cloud coverage increased later in the afternoon as the storm was beginning to roll in.
Snowpack
The average height of snow (HS) on the east side of Richmond Ridge was around 160-190cm and on the west side around 130-160cm. The February 2 layer of buried surface hoar is still very prominent and reactive in snowpack tests consistently getting propagating results around 20-25 taps on extended column tests and failing after cutting about 30% of the column on propagation saw tests. A thin layer of rounding facets from mid-February exists in the upper snowpack but is stubborn and unreactive in long column tests and while small column tests will likely highlight this layer as a concern, no avalanches were observed to fail on this layer yet. The dust layer seems to be breaking easily on shovel shear tests and is something worth keeping an eye on.
Avalanche
So far the avalanche activity in the Elks seems to be generally at the lower end of the above treeline elevation band or near treeline, largely where the surface hoar was buried intact on February 2, with surprisingly little activity at higher elevations after the early March storm. The McFarlane's avalanche broke on the February 2 layer of buried surface hoar and it is possible it was remotely triggered by a nearby snowcat. The avalanche failed between 2:00 - 2:45 PM on March 6. Partially breaking on a part of the slope that was triggered a couple of weeks prior, the avalanche wrapped around a shoulder into two distinct start zones spanning multiple aspects with the February 2 surface hoar layer noticeable across the entire slope. A few other large and possibly very large avalanches were observed far up the Conundrum Creek drainage from Richmond Ridge and coded in a separate observation.