AVALANCHES: On east side of Snodgrass, observed older avalanche debris in a terrain trap and a recent N-LS-R1 on SE aspect (slide may have occurred within last 72 hours).

WEATHER: mostly sunny skies with slight breeze with a gradual transition to mostly cloudy skies to breeze. Breeze didn’t have velocity to transport snow.

SNOWPACK: Southeast aspest along skin track had “crunchy sun crust.

East side of Snodgrass: Hand test below ridge revealed sun crust underlain by facets. This cycle repeated itself for a depth of 16 to 20 cm.
At same elevation band as aspens, snow transitioned to stiff wind slabs to Gothic road.…

AVALANCHES: New snow ran on a SE facing slope. Skier triggered. Began at about 11,000 feet and ended about 10,000 feet.

WEATHER: Clear…

AVALANCHES: This is probably common knowledge already since I noticed it a few days ago. Skinning up red lady bowl/glades ridge, I observed a small slide on the other side of the bowl (S,SW) around 11,000ft. It looks like there was some skier activity over there, so I imagine it was triggered from a ski cut. Judging from a distance, the slide had about a 60 yard run. Since then, I have not observed any other action on the same aspect. Cheers. Be safe out there.

WEATHER: Blue Bird

UPLOADS:

Red-Lady-Slide

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Surface faceting continuing on shaded aspects and some thin wind crusts found below treeline on open slopes crossloading terrain features North to South. Persistent slab seems to be losing cohesion. Travel on open slopes into the high 30’s slope angle produced one small collapse on a steep roll, but nothing moved and no other signs of instability. Ski pen deepening throughout the week it seems. Poor structure in this zone but low hazard it seems due to any slab cohesion. …

AVALANCHES: Yesterday oberseved N-SS-D0.5 on west facing road cut on 135 by Roaring Judy. Went to ground. Unsure if it occured on 1/17 or 1/16.

WEATHER: Mostly sunny. Warm. No wind!!

SNOWPACK: Hand tests: southern aspects-upper 1 5 to 20 cm-1 cm of yesterday’s snow on top of sun crust of 5cm. Below that suncrust are facets and the cycle repeats itself with a layer cake of sun crusts and facets.

north aspects-15 to 20 cm of F snow.

Warm temperatures on open part of skin track resulted in clumping snow on skins in January!!

UPLOADS:…

AVALANCHES: Snowboarder triggered, small point release. R2D1-2 From summit zone between 1st and 2nd bowl. ~37 degrees. Just top layer, ran from summit area to where slope mellows.

WEATHER: Light Northwest/North winds, clear, moderate to warm temps

SNOWPACK: Noticed ~3″ Wind Slab at ridgeline

UPLOADS:…

AVALANCHES: Two fresh windslabs off of SE face of Ruby, and 2 fresh debris piles below the east face of Owen (presumably also windslabs, but didn’t see the start zones), all relatively small, D1 to D1.5. The windslabs on Ruby were roughly 100 feet wide and 8″ to 12″ thick. SS-N-R1-D1.5-U. Saw one snowmobile triggered windslab on a small, windloaded terrain feature, E aspect ATL, up 10″ thick.. SS-AM-R1-D1-I, We skier triggered a wet loose avalanche on a south aspect that picked up a fair amount of snow by the bottom, running on the Jan 11th crust. . WL-AS-R1-D1.5-I
See photos.

WEATHER: Moderate westerly winds. Few clouds. Warm.

SNOWPACK: Above treeline on south aspects, the snow surface is melt-freeze crust. The Jan 11 meltfreeze crust is thick and supportive, with about 4-6″ of dry to moist new snow above it and a ~1″ thick MFcrust at the surface. East and Northeast aspects held dry snow, with the surface mostly wind crusts, and a few patches of softer, rippled faceted snow. Pockets of denser, thicker, windloaded snow.

UPLOADS:

DSCF5517-001

DSCF5516-001

DSCF5510-001

AVALANCHES: One natural soft slab involving the recent storm snow on an East aspect ATL on Schuykill Peak that failed sometime in the past 5 days, SS-N-R2-D1.5-I Looked to be about a foot deep and 100-200 feet wide. Not much else for recent activity except some smaller sluffs and a small windslab on crossloaded SW above treeline.

WEATHER: Light west winds, clear skies, mild temps. Some plumes observed off of Ruby Range.

SNOWPACK: No new snow. In flat terrain, snowpack was supportive about 70% of the time, and trapdoor the rest. One collapse noted. As slopes steepened, there was little concern for persistent slab. Mostly meltforms throughout the snowpack and some moist facets below the several supportive crusts near the surface. Shallow snow depths between 20 and 60 cm. No signs of instability on slopes up to 40 degrees. The crust sandwhich at the surface (Very thick Jan 11 crust/1-3″ of soft snow/ thin surface crust) could be a big concern with future storms as that soft layer below today’s thin surface crust facets out.…