Date of Observation: 01/11/2023

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Couple laps in AMR. North, 10,000ft to 11,500ft

Observed avalanche activity: No

Weather: Continuous snow through the morning hours and starting to taper off in the early afternoon. Strong NW winds and lots of snow transport. Poor visibility.

Snowpack: Measured about 40 to 45cm of new snow in an old skin track. I’d assume that track was put in yesterday. A couple of different storm interfaces in the upper snowpack, with layers of lower-density snow and grapple. Cracking in the upper snowpack become more abundant as we entered NTL elevations or in areas with wind-affected snow. We skied slope angles around 35 degrees and didn’t otherwise encounter anything notable.

Date of Observation: 01/11/2023

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Traveled on westerly below treeline terrain near Pittsburg.

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Saw a couple of storm slabs that likely ran yesterday or last night on a cut bank above the Slate. Limited vis, but I could see that there were no valley crushers off of Schuylkill Ridge which was nice.
Weather: Storming hard. Moderate to heavy snowfall throughout the day with gusty northwest winds blowing snow down valley and off trees.
Snowpack: Storm totals near Pittsburg are 50 cm and the snowpack is ~200 cm. No signs of instability underfoot traveling on mellow slope angles. On a west aspect, we tested the 12/20 and 11/28 layers using modified deep-tap ECTs. 11/28 produced a propagating fracture under a 170 cm slab. The layer is 3-4 mm depth hoar. The 12/20 interface is 1-1.5mm rounding facets, and did not propagate fractures.

Date of Observation: 01/11/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite obserations

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Cloudy (all day, all the time) with only light snowfall yesterday but very dense as it reached 32F. Some wind late morning on. Then a bit of snow after dark, pausing until around midnight and then steady snow (4½”) since. Total the last 24 hours was 7″ new and water 0.66″ as the snowpack reached winter’s deepest of 56½”. Wind is calm and the current temperature is the morning low of 18F with light snow. billy
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/10/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek trailhead to below treeline hills around Warm Springs.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Light snowfall in the late morning and ending by noon. New snow a denser 5 inches. Westerly winds blowing at moderate speeds with some strong gusts transporting snow at upper elevations. Mild air temperatures.
Snowpack: While walking through flat terrain around a creek bottom I experienced frequent collapsing running up to 100 feet breaking on a mid-December weak layer (see images). The depth in this area was around 80cm with a 45cm 4-finger slab. Touring around I experienced collapsing on west through north through easterly aspects with northerly terrain being the least frequent. Snowpack tests showed moderate propagating results. In this area and elevation, the terrain facing southeast, south, and southwest generally was too shallow and lacked a slab for an avalanche problem.

Date of Observation: 01/10/2023

Date of Observation: 01/10/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Gothic townsite weather.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Cloudy and mild overnight with very light snow after dark becoming moderate around midnight and holding through the night with 6½” new and a dense 0.61″ of water. Currently calm with moderate snow and 23F after a low of 21F. Yesterday’s high 29F with the snowpack at 52″.
Snowpack:

Date of Observation: 01/09/2023

Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Washington Gulch Road to southern side of Baldy.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: Overcast skies by around 11 am. Periodic light snowfall during the afternoon added up to just less than one inch. Moderate westerly winds with strong gusts at upper elevations. Blowing snow and flagging off the highest terrain.
Snowpack: I rolled through southerly aspects through 11,800 feet checking on surface crust formation from the past few days. A barely discernable crust formed on east aspects that slowly increased in thickness as I swung into southeast, south, and southwest aspects. South and southwest terrain developed a 3cm crust. The snow below the crusts remain soft, but faceting was quite minimal; no real surprise as this snow accumulated last Friday.

A test profile on a southeast slope at 10,000′ (depth 175cm) did not produce any propagating results on the weak layer below the Holiday Slab. Weak layers in the middle and bottom of the snowpack are 4-finger hardness and show signs of rounding.

I did not find any Surface Hoar on my tour around Washington Gulch from the humid air this past weekend.

Date of Observation: 01/08/2023

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Viewed from Double Top

Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A few more previously undocumented avalanches from the recent cycles, sometime between 1/1 and 1/4