2008-2009 Colorado Snowpack Observations

[goldenboy]

We had the rare "black rose" here in CB during the New Year's storm, too. Don't see that one often.

Biggest slide I've ever seen ran overnight tuesday morning 2/5. The E face of Gothic is the beautiful Alaska-esque face visible from the ski area. A few people live in the tiny town of Gothic year round. Billy Barr has been there for years, here's what he said about the slide on the CBAC: "That was a size 5. Ran further than i have ever seen in 36 years- across the river, the meadow, the road and a ways up the hill well beyond the river. Fracture was from the peak about 10-12 feet deep running to ground and in the range of 1500-2000 feet wide Also hit the bridge. Cleared the whole starting zone and everything else on the way down."

The CAIC reported the vertical on this slide as 3100'

Hopefully it fills back in for a springtime decent, it sure was looking amazing the day before.

[smitchell333]

Yucky up north

"Avalanche Warning in Effect through 2/9/2008 6:00:00 AM

Avalanche Danger The avalanche danger for the Front Range zone is overall HIGH. An avalanche warning is in effect for Friday. Avoid traveling on or below any terrain greater than 30 degrees."

[HikeforTurns]

http://www.cbavalanchecenter.org/page.cfm?pageid=9861

[smolakian]

^^^^^
Sweet!! (too look at at least!)

[goldenboy]

^^^ Between the Gothic slide and that one on White mtn., we're getting some rather massive ones. The one on White was remote triggered by clients in a guide-training course.

Down in the Cement creek drainage, a friend of mine was buried and a dog didn't make it . And some slednecker sent something down that covered the road where it's plowed- not cool given that's where moms go for walks with their strollers and dogs.

Needless to say, the ski area has been just fine by me.

[smitchell333]

13" on the 13th!!!

Great skiing in the trees since the Pass had been closed for 2-3 days solid and the 13+" was totally virgin.

Snowpack wise the base is a real mixed bag of hoar, hardslab, powder, and suncrust depending on aspect, elevation, etc. In the new snow there were obvious soft slabs from the storm and wind built on east faces above, at, and just below treeline. Skiing a lower angle cross drift right at treeline caused easy cracking which would have slid 2' deep if it were steep enough to slide there.

Not a day to be aggressive since if it goes it could go big with deep slab instability still significant. My gut is that the worst place to be right now is a steep, windloaded, N to NE to E to SE aspect right at treeline since these are perhaps more windloaded on top from strong winds and having depth hoar lying at the bottom. CAIC mentioned Stanley slide going big lower than usual at treeline last week - I think this is this effect.

South facing at/above treeline slopes skied very nicely, although I only wanted to ski where <30 deg and/or where wind scoured down to a few inches of fresh.

Something I've noted is that typically by this time of year we've gone through at least one significant warm spell that really settles the snowpack down and we start to talk about "bridging" over many of the deep slab instabilities such that it becomes more difficult to stress the pack down into the weak layers and hence trigger a slide. While we've had some dry spells they haven't been warm enough to really have the effect of settling out/consolidating the pack and creating a somewhat uniform bridging. I'm still holding back on the bigger lines until we get that warming/consolidation to reduce the odds of the big slides, perhaps in March.

[HikeforTurns]

should be in this thread too:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8306484

[montanaskier]

sad, sad, sad

[jwolter7]

Lots to learn from in the video......
Who is your guide in the BC???

[jwolter7]

http://www.cbavalanchecenter.org/page.cfm?pageid=9861

Massive weight of the snowpack as it moved down slope. Never seen carving out like that before by just snow, Looks more like the trail of a serac fall on a glacier. Or, maybe even the look of a large rock fall down a snowslope.
The distance it went is also impressive...You see the clues in the mountains that slides like this happen, rare to be there when it does. Did anyone in town here it, or feel it that night?

[montanaskier]

did Black Lakes up at Vail Pass on Sunday. Beautiful day. Was up there last Saturday when it was so warm and had a small fracture about 3 feet across and about 18" deep.

Decided to dig a pit just to see today what was up basically. Dug about 4-5 feet down.

Found an ice layer about a 1/2" thick about 2 1/2 feet deep, that was the most distinguishable layer we found. Test failed at 4 from the elbow but only slightly, looked like maybe another small ice layer from last week maybe. Got another fail at 4 from the shoulder on the ice layer I mentioned above. Not a clean shear either time. This was done on a 38* slope north to ne facing at around 11k.

Skiing was great.

[Phatstix]

Massive weight of the snowpack as it moved down slope. Never seen carving out like that before by just snow, Looks more like the trail of a serac fall on a glacier. Or, maybe even the look of a large rock fall down a snowslope.
The distance it went is also impressive...You see the clues in the mountains that slides like this happen, rare to be there when it does. Did anyone in town here it, or feel it that night?

When I was in Alaska a couple years ago a slide covered the highway that leads into Valdez. It was a freak of nature. Notice the person standing on the side of road.

[GoldenBear]

Skied the North Couloir of Buffalo Mountain yesterday 3/11/08. The avy rose in the morning read Low on NW, W and SW aspects and Moderate above tree line on N, NE, E, SE, S aspects. We were aware that the forecast was calling for warm temperatures in the mid 40's with some clouds. It was clear in at 5am and about -1 F. We were a bit concerned about the southern aspects and the possibility of a warm slide so we thought we would stick to the east/North east aspect of the North Couloir.

After entering the couloir we chose an area that would give us the best representation of the entire snow pack. The pit was dug to the ground. The first meter and half were a single layer that was very supportive. Upon testing the the blocks it was difficult to get the block to break. The sheer was clean but did not propagate at all. After testing different blocks from the surface to the ground we concluded that if it were to rip it would be ripping all the way to the ground. In this conclusion we acknowledged the fact that the first meter and a half was one solid layer. The decision was made to ski and just follow proper safety protocol.

Some Photos of the pit. Sorry there are none of the interior pit.

[montanaskier]

skied East Vail for the first time on Saturday. There was light snow falling and we found about 3 or 4 inches of fresh snow on top. We skied the ridge and trees skiers left of Mushroom Bowl. We stopped and dug a pit near the top on a NE facing aspect at about 35*. The top 4 inches was very evident on top of a hard layer. About 18" deep was a pretty evident frozen ice type layer. Our compression test showed a slight break of the column at 3 from the elbow, but it was not a clean shear. I did go to pick up the column after the test and it lifted very cleanly at that frozen layer.

[MakersTeleMark]

03.23.08 Due W facing hasty pit on K chute consisted of 14 layers alternating between cohesionless facets and crusts with 2 inches of windblown pow on top of said layers all resting on a 35 cm depth hoar base. Was the nastiest pit I've ever personally seen. Not one stable solid layer of snow, just firm crust and air. Not much energy in the pack, but it didn't need it. Skiing was rad.

[~mikey b]

yeah, but, is it snowing at your house?

[MakersTeleMark]

yeah, but, is it snowing at your house?

This makes no sense to me. Were you posting drunk?

[pechelman]

03.23.08 Due W facing hasty pit on K chute consisted of 14 layers alternating between cohesionless facets and crusts with 2 inches of windblown pow on top of said layers all resting on a 35 cm depth hoar base. Was the nastiest pit I've ever personally seen. Not one stable solid layer of snow, just firm crust and air. Not much energy in the pack, but it didn't need it. Skiing was rad.

you skied K then?
what made you comfortable with that?
looking for insight into the decision and not to criticize or anything

or am i an idiot and you just skied something else

[MakersTeleMark]

you skied K then?
what made you comfortable with that?
looking for insight into the decision and not to criticize or anything

or am i an idiot and you just skied something else

We promptly turned around and went out for breakfast. Jesus rose from the dead it is said, I didn't feel I could pull that feat off that particular day as I was bloated with gas from the copious amounts of Indian food I ate the night before.

That actually makes 2 weekends in a row where we've backed off of something.

[pechelman]

gotcha
next time eat more curry
the extra gas will help you rise above

[~mikey b]

This makes no sense to me. Were you posting drunk?

no - not drunk

hazing MTS

[montanaskier]

skied EV today. Really good up top, shin deep cold smoke. As we got lower, it turned into unsupportive, bottomless facets. Steep lines E and N facing showed signs of wind loading. We stayed west facing and in the trees and avoided dangerous rollovers. It was a good ski.

[el_jefe]

anyone have any recent red mt pass beta on snowpack, routes, etc? we're headed down there for a hut trip next week and i'm trying to pull together some info. gracias.

[pappag]

4/1/2008 - Berthoud Pass








According to CAIC, there were 20 avalanches (human- and naturally-triggered) this day, but we encountered no such activity directly. I would say that we saw about 6 or 7 naturally-triggered avalanches off the headwall in areas that no one would be skiing. The picture above should help illustrate the area we skied. On top was 6-8" of semi-compacted fresh snow. Underneath was a 2-foot deep slab that did not break upon heavy impact. Underneath that was a relatively weak thin layer and then another deep slab. Total depth of pit was about 4-5 feet.


We later attempted to skin up the chutes (north-facing) marked in yellow above. Because of the steep slope and lack of energy left (and long skis), I wasn't able to make it up. But in the process, we discovered that outside of the gladed area, snow in the open fields was VERY unstable with no sign of solidification. If you were to bootpack here, you would have sunk wasit-deep with no resistance.

[stihletto]

steep southeast aspects were sketch today. Set a slide off on russell's SE face with a small cut on top. I wasn't close to the edge. It was ready to go. Slid on the last bad sun crust layer. Mines was skied by many, with np releases.