Avalanche forecast

Gunnison

Crested Butte Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Sun
Alpine
1 · Low
Treeline
1 · Low
Below
1 · Low
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Out of date — this forecast expired 6 years ago. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

An inch or two of new snow won’t increase the avalanche danger this weekend.  If you’re looking for the rare exception to a generally stable snowpack, you might find it on a high elevation, windloaded slope that tilts steeply to the north or northeast.  You can confidently guard against a surprise avalanche by choosing other aspects.  

Avalanche problems

  • Persistent Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Unlikely
    Size
    1

    A patchy distribution of wind drifted slabs on top of old, sugary snow exists on some high elevation, northerly-facing terrain features.  Although these persistent slabs are difficult to trigger and relatively small, they can cause trouble if they drag you over rocks, stumps, or early season obstacles.  Be cautious of terrain where you find dunes of dense snow overlying a continuous layer of weak, faceted snow on the ground.

    High northerly aspect? ☑. Smooth ground cover? ☑. Weak snow on the ground? ☑. Windloaded slab? ☑. Here's what it looks like when you've found the ingredients for our current persistent slab problem.

Avalanche Discussion

Our snowpack is caught in the early-season doldrums.  Thin snow coverage coupled with warm temperatures and a lack of significant snow loading in the past week have all conspired to create LOW danger and a generally stable snowpack.  Instabilities are isolated and mending. 

But even the doldrums are known to produce surprise squalls.  In our snowpack, those squalls are the lingering threat of human-triggered slabs breaking 1 to 2 feet deep on weak snow near the ground.  They might surprise you because they don’t give consistent or reliable feedback, but the type of terrain where they might exist shouldn’t surprise you.  We have pinpointed their location to high elevation, northerly terrain - terrain where our early season weak layers and more recently formed slabs overlap. On those near to above treeline, northerly aspects, we can narrow down potential problem slopes even further.  Be wary of terrain with smooth underlying ground cover where the weak layer is continuous: think grassy slopes or slopes with smooth shale instead of chunky talus - often our early season go-to terrain.   And furthermore, the slope needs to be previously windloaded, as opposed to raked clean of a slab by last weekend's strong northwest winds.   Today’s inch or two of new snow may help disguise the problematic dunes and drifts from wind scoured features, making the slabs harder to recognize.  Yet you can make a bomb-proof route plan by choosing aspects that face east or south or west where weak layers don’t exist, or by choosing northerly terrain that doesn’t fit the description above.  Our observations of the basal weak layer distribution prior to burial can serve as a great starting point for planning your mountain adventures.       

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