Boletín de aludes

Southeast Mountains

Crested Butte Avalanche Center
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Peligro de aludes

Wed
Alta montaña
2 · Moderado
Límite del bosque
2 · Moderado
Bajo el límite
2 · Moderado
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Desactualizado: este boletín caducó 4 years ago. Estás viendo condiciones pasadas, no el boletín vigente.

Lo esencial

In your hunt for soft snow and good riding conditions today, you will encounter few, if any, obvious signs of instability. However, triggering a large avalanche remains possible. Consider ways to reduce your risk of encountering this avalanche problem. Trigger points, safe zones, and terrain consequences should all be discussion points in your group. Wind-sheltered terrain facing south and southwest continues to offer the safest steep riding options in the areas where you can find enough snow coverage.  

Problemas de aludes

  • Persistent Slabs

    • Alta montaña
    • Límite del bosque
    • Bajo el límite del bosque
    Probabilidad
    Possible
    Tamaño
    1.5–2.5

    Storms this month have built thick and hard persistent slabs over a widespread weak layer of facets and faceted crusts. These slabs are generally 2 to 43-feet thick. The vast majority of avalanche activity this month has occurred on west to north to southeast aspects, with only a few avalanches from alpine south to southwest facing alpine terrain. Persistent slabs are notorious for erratic feedback and unusual behavior, such as remote triggering and wide propagation. To reliably avoid the problem, choose routes that keep you off and out from under terrain steeper than about 30 degrees that hold old, weak snow near the ground. In steeper terrain, you can reduce your chance of triggering an avalanche by avoiding trigger points where the snowpack is thinner than average.  Thin spots are most common in wind-affected terrain or near rock bands or vegetation.  

    This persistent slab avalanche wrapped from shady to sunny aspects and broke on weak layers near the ground. This a good example of the potential size and widely propagating behavior of our current persistent slab problem. 

Avalanche Discussion

We have finally broken the long-running string of natural avalanche activity, with no avalanche activity reported yesterday. The most recently observed avalanche was between Agusta and Purple Mountains last Sunday. The sensitivity to the persistent slab avalanche problem has slowly decreased over a longer period. We've been talking about the lack of obvious signs of instability for some time now, as this avalanche problem has grown stubborn to human triggering. There is still a poor snowpack structure in many areas, with weak faceted snow near the ground and a strong slab resting above. Trigger points and areas where the slab thins are some of the most likely areas to trigger these persistent slab avalanches. It may even take many tracks on a slope to find that trigger point. So in the end, don't become complacent, or be careful not to become overconfident in conditions if you are seeing lots of tracks on a slope and/or not seeing any obvious signs of instability. 

The continued stretch of cold temperatures that we have seen lately, is eating away at those slabs in some areas, and creating a new layer of weak snow on the current snow surface. This will become problematic as we go into our next couple of storms as new avalanche problems develop. Fresh wind slabs will likely be developing by tomorrow before things get really weird with the arrival of the arctic blast on Wednesday Night. 

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