Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
It's a hot, wet mess of rollerballs and wet loose slides out there on E to S to W aspects. Most northerlies have been spared by the furnace, though wet loose activity and gloppy travel has spread into some NE and NW aspects. Poor ski quality this afternoon: sticky, unsupportive, or punchy. Waterskis may have been the tool of choice.
Easy to trigger large pinwheels the size of truck tires and wet loose avalanches this afternoon. Ongoing natural wet loose activity. We triggered a few wet slab style collapses in flat terrain around 10,000'. The collapses radiated less than 15 feet and appeared to fail on wet weak layers at the ground.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Hot! A light breeze in the alpine was the only refreshing moment of the day.
Snowpack
At 10 a.m., on a planar 35 degree slope facing east at 10,000', meltwater was pooling about 45 cm deep on a crust (I think the 3/13 interface). By 1 p.m., it was easy to trigger shallow wet loose slides and rollerballs on southerly or easterly aspects near treeline, and the top few inches was wet and gloppy on northeast aspects. By 1:30 p.m on a southeast aspect at 11,500', wet loose avalanches were gouging through most of the snowpack in steep, rocky terrain, and ski pen was shin deep.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Type
- WS
- Count
- 15
- Aspect
- SE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11000 ft
D1 to D2 wet loose activity from the past few days is too numerous to document or date confidently. I'm coding the larger or fresh ones here. We observed several run today. Wet loose slides have occurred on all aspects except due north. We triggered a few wet loose this afternoon; steep rocky SE slopes were gouging through most of the snowpack. The only notable slab avalanche we observed was in the West Elk Wilderness - a large slab (appeared to be dry) on an east aspect that looks like it was triggered by a wet loose avalanche recently, I'm guessing yesterday.