Gunnison
AvalancheCBAC Staff · Jan 19, 2024 · Gunnison
Snowpack
Crown inspection of the SE-facing remotely triggered persistent slab. The deepest part of the crown was 9' feet thick, 1F hard, and failed on 4F- 1.5-2mm facets (January 5th layer). The shallower part of the crown was 4' thick, averaged 4F hard, and failed on F hard 3-4 mm facets. The crown averaged about 5 feet thick. The 1/5 interface here is facets above and below a crust of varying thickness. It appeared that the avalanche failed on the facets above the crust, but then plowed out the entire snowpack once it got moving, to the ground.
Avalanche
We remotely triggered a pair of destructive persistent slabs in the south bowl of Mt. Baldy (D2.5 and D3). We also observed a few more natural persistent slabs that appeared to run yesterday: D3 off the SW side of Gothic (reported yesterday), D2 near Meridian Lake, D2 near Red Lady Glades, and D2 on the East face of Schuylkill Peak. We also got our first look into the Upper Slate since the MLK cycle and there was evidence of many large to very large avalanches running throughout the storm.