Lawinenlagebericht

Northwest Mountains

Crested Butte Avalanche Center
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Lawinengefahr

Fri
Hochgebirge
1 · Gering
Waldgrenze
1 · Gering
Unterhalb
1 · Gering
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Kernpunkte

As long as you keep those ski tips up, and out from under logs or from diving into gofer holes, you can travel through the mountains with normal caution. On steep northerly facing slopes, it's possible to trigger small loose snow avalanches or "facet sluffs". Consider easing into steep terrain, and utilizing sluff management techniques. Even a small avalanche can push you into more hazardous terrain traps, or drag you through exposed rocks and trees. 

Lawinenprobleme

  • Loose Dry

    • Hochgebirge
    • Waldgrenze
    • Unterhalb der Waldgrenze
    Wahrscheinlichkeit
    Likely
    Größe
    1

    On very steep terrain sheltered from the sun and wind, you can easily trigger sluffs where the snow surface is loose and cohesionless. These skier triggered loose avalanches from Climax Chutes on Thursday, 12/3, highlight the problem.   In the Southeast Mountains, facet sluffs have been gouging to the ground and are more challenging to manage than typical sluffing.  While most of these avalanches are small in size, they can easily cause harm because they will drag you over rocks, stumps, and bare ground.  In terrain with long, sustained runouts, slides will grow in size as they entrain more snow, and in rare cases,  may reach up to D2 in size.  

Avalanche Discussion

The shallow snowpack around Crested Butte has been weakened and faceted by cold temperatures and valley inversions. This faceted snowpack has produced human-triggered loose avalanches for the past week. The largest of these avalanches have occurred in terrain close to Crested Butte where strong valley inversions have created a cohesionless snowpack the lacks any kind of support. You can check out some observations of this avalanche activity in these observations from Happy Chutesand Climax Chutes. Observations from the past week out of the Northwest Mountains have shown the Dry Loose avalanche problem to be even smaller, involving just the surface snow. Beneath the weak surface often lies a more supportive base that prevents loose avalanches from gouging to the ground. You can look at these observations from the Northwest Mountains to better understand the problem where the snowpack is a bit stronger (Schuylkill Ridge, above Pittsburg, Purple Palace, and Anthracites). One way to help manage this avalanche problem is by performing ski cuts to flush snow prior to descending, and to get a feel for how the snow will behave. The snowpack in alpine terrain is denser than slopes at low elevations and offers a significantly reduced chance of encountering the Dry Loose avalanche problem.

With new snow in the forecast and the arrival of a more active weather pattern, the Avalanche Danger will rise into the weekend. The current snowpack is exceptionally weak after a long and cold period of dry weather. We expect little new snow will be needed to start forming new avalanche problems that will quickly become sensitive to human triggering. Natural avalanche activity may also be on the horizon late Saturday and into Saturday Night. 

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