Aspen
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Apr 11, 2025 · Aspen
Weather
It was a cool morning. The temperatures were around freezing on my drive to the trailhead around 8:00 a.m., but they quickly warmed up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit by the time I got back to the trailhead at 9100 feet around 3:00 p.m. The truck was reading over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Carbondale on my way home around 4:00 P.M. The skies were clear and mostly calm, with occasional light gusts from the southwest.
Snowpack
I got some moderate collapsing on flat and south-facing slopes around 2:00 P.M. that would propagate out around 20 feet from my skis. The snowpack was homogenous melt forms down to the ground on almost all slopes I traveled on below about 11,000 feet. Above 11,000 feet north-facing slopes had a newly wet snow surface with very difficult skinning conditions as the dry snow just got wet yesterday or today and would glop to my skins, making travel very difficult. Any persistent weak layers were not easily recognizable with a snowpack nearly 3 meters deep with moist to wet snow throughout all showing signs of rounding and bonding with no concerning snowpack test results on any layer. There are a couple interfaces in the upper snowpack that could be a concern for Wet Slab avalanche activity the next couple of days but there was no sign that Persistent Slab avalanches exist where I traveled today.
Avalanche
Saw a few older dry slab avalanches and several recent Loose Wet avalanches. Afternoon it was very easy to trigger Loose Wet avalanches on any slope above 40 degrees.