Sawatch
AvalancheSpencer Herford · Dec 20, 2022 · Sawatch
Weather
Sunny, temps warmed up as the day went on. Light SW winds with moderate gusts on occasion. No precip.
Snowpack
Toured mostly on a NW aspect, BTL and NTL. HS varied from 30cm to over 1m, depending on the remaining tree cover in the logging area. Still lots of scary and sharp dead fall everywhere in this area. Be cautious if you venture here! Coverage is all over the place. In more open areas as the trees thin out, I found areas with a deeper snowpack with a supportable midpack slab. Collapsing was widespread on my entire tour through both elevation bands. One particular area that was in a more open area I had a really good whumph with the radial cracks going about 50 feet away from me. I did an ECT here out of curiosity and had propagating failure right below the midpack slab on the first tap. Another pit (attached) in a slightly more sheltered area had failure on the same layer with moderate force. Both locations had the midpack slab, just in different states of the faceting process. Below treeline that midpack slab is mostly faceted out, but I was still getting collapsing, just not going out as far as they did higher up.
Avalanche
Old avalanche south of the summit of Clover. East Aspect, ATL. N-R2-D2. Estimated 12/16. Saw it Saturday, forgot to post the obs about it.