Sawatch
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Mar 16, 2019 · Sawatch
Snowpack
There really is not much need to dig in the snow at this point. The snowpack may look solid in a snowpit but recent avalanche activity indicates otherwise. I did dig on a below treeline southeast facing slope and found a thick slab about 3-4 feet thick sitting on very weak facets on depth hoar. The slab is up to pencil hardness and contains a few hard crusts. No results, as expected in an extended column test. Clearly these avalanches will be hard to trigger but the consequences would be devastating. A local snowmobiler that I ran into reported a couple avalanches that crossed the Halfmoon Road. He described the size of the avalanches by saying "companion rescue wouldn't do all that much good".
Avalanche
Numerous avalanches viewed around the Halfmoon Creek area. It's hard to tell when things slid but I think most of the avalanche activity was at least 4 days old with most avalanches likely from March 7th. The avalanches on French Mountains looked fairly fresh and I would guess that these ran on March 13th. The largest avalanches were near to above treeline but there were also large and wide avalanches observed below treeline.