Gunnison

A few tiny natural Storm Slab avalanches. Debris piles so small they don't warrant coding.

Around 6 to 7 inches of new snow by 10:30 am. No snow from 10:30 through 2:30. Light winds at ridgetop with minimal amounts of drifting. cloud cover: broken; wind loading: light; recent snowfall (cm): 17; snow avail for transport: moderate amounts

We dug a test profile (northeast slope, 10,600 feet) adjacent to a profile from 1/1 to see how the weak layer is behaving with a larger slab.  Test results produced an ECTP 17 below the Christmas crust with a 75 cm slab up to 1 finger hard above (see image).  We walked around in a few undisturbed areas looking for feedback and collapsing; we produced a single large collapse and shooting cracks at the entrance to East Bowl, but the slope did not slide. Poking around on the sunny side of the ridge revealed a stack of soft, lightly faceted snow and melt/freeze crusts.  I didn't encounter a slab so no profile.  There certainly is enough weak snow and soft crusts to be problematic if a slab were encountered, but it doesn't seem to fit a 'most likely' place to find a problem.  . We saw a few tiny Storm Slabs on very steep northerly terrain. Crowns were just a few inches thick and covered by an inch of new snow. By the time we moved through similar terrain, we didn't experience any cracking. We experienced a single booming collapse and shooting cracks on east terrain near 11,200 feet.