Quick report
Glassing mission to look for recent activity in the southern mountains. I got a decent view of a lot of W-S-E facing terrain. I saw one fresh loose snow avalanche on a west aspect near 7500' in Quigley Gulch drainage. I saw what may be blown in slab avalanches in the Buttercup Mtn area and on Kelly Peak in Croy Canyon. I did not see any obvious avalanches om Peak 1 or 2 in the Soldier Mtns. I didn't see any fresh, large, slab avalanches anywhere today, but visibility was not perfect and I was not able to glass many NE-N-NW aspects.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Visibility was partially obscured above about 7500' in Croy and the Patterson Peak area, good in the Buttercup to Liberal-Cannonball area, mixed bag in the Soldiers. Snow available for transport = large amounts over about 7500', and much less as you move below that due to rain falling at times this week.
Snowpack
Some surface wind effects on exposed W-SW-S-SE aspects. There was still a fair amount of snow in the trees in most middle and upper elevation terrain. Wind loading was isolated to right at ridgelines and prominent cross loaded terrain features.
The new snow was getting wet in sun-exposed lower elevation terrain where I poked around. There were some rollerballs and tiny wet dribbles in steep, S-W facing terrain near Cannonball Mtn in the Sampson Ck cirque. Some solars will have crusts form after this afternoon's sun and temperatures.
Avalanche
One obvious loose snow avalanche (D1.5?) on W aspect on Patterson near 7500'. I did not see any large, fresh slab avalanches anywhere. A couple possible blown in slab avalanches above 8000' E-NE on Kelly Mtn in Croy (in the shadows by the time the clouds cleared out). Possible blown in slabs in Buttercup area 7500-9000' NE-E-SE (could be slides from earlier this week in steep rocky areas with thin snowpacks, could be wind-effect or wind features, could be a mixture of both). My photos don't show much when they are resized for this platform - sorry.