Horse Creek to Blind Bull, Gunsight Pass

Rode to the Blind Bull weather station to clear the interval board. Cleared 44 inches of snow containing 11.25 inches of water off the interval board. It was las cleared on January 13th.

Relatively deep snowpack in this part of the Wyoming range. Just under 6 feet (180cm) of snow at the weather station and 9.5 feet (290 cm) at our pit location near Gunsight Pass - pit location was in an exposed area with most likely some wind loading. We also observed some slopes that were scoured down to the ground. This is typical for the Gunsight Pass area as the wind usually moves the snow around quite a bit here.

Our pit had almost 4 feet of snow (120cm) sitting above the 1/31 interface and showed rounding and increasing density (1 finger hardness) within the weak layer (facets) buried on 1/31. Above the 1/31 there is a very stout slab of increasing hardness (fist down to pencil hardness just above 1/31). Two layers of concern presented in the top  20 inches. The first is 14" (35cm) down and most likely a storm interface from 2/6. ECTN12 was observed on this layer. The second was 6 inches below that and very obvious due to a buried layer of dust most likely from the windy, warm weather on 2/4. There is a 1 cm crust here and we got an ECTN23 just below the crust. No propagation was observed at the 1/31 interface buried almost 4 feet (120cm).

The only avalanche activity we saw was older than 48 hours. We saw a couple of old, small cornice breaks with very minimal debris - maybe some very small wind slab broke below but very small (<D1). We also observed an old avalanche on the east face just to the north of Gunsight Pass. The crown was filled in and the debris mostly covered, but the crown looked to be connected across the top of the path below the ridge, maybe a couple hundred feet across. A small filled in crown was also observed near a rocky outcrop midslope. Most likely a good portion of the face went during peak loading earlier this week.