Avalanches failing on the buried dusty crust, mostly wet loose, anywhere from 20 to 40 cm deep, are the main concern. Above treeline, I found 20 to 30 cm of moist recent storm snow that was far from transitioning to melt forms. At around noon, I traveled on east—and southeast-facing slopes. I was on slopes below 40 degrees, but if I were on steeper slopes, I feel certain I would have triggered Loose Wet avalanches. Loose Wet avalanches are the biggest threat, and with continued hot days and marginal freezes at night, these avalanches will grow in size.

Guanella Pass area

Numerous D1 to D1.5 Loose Wet avalanches. They most likely occurred on Saturday.

I ascended north-facing slopes to see if the snowpack has a structure conducive to Wet Slab avalanche structure, and the amount of meltwater moving through the snowpack. On a near treeline, north-facing slope, I found a snowpack 2 meters deep. Although ski pen was minimal, boot pen was through the moist storm snow to the dust layer. I got propagating results (ECTP11) on large-grained, moist to wet, clustered melt forms 28 cm from the surface. Just below this layer is an ice formation and dust colored snow. It doesn't look like meltwater has moved deeper than the dust crust at about 30 cm from the surface. Below this is a homogenous snowpack of very small, rounded grains. I found this upper snowpack structure to be concerning for triggering Wet Slab avalanches on northerly slopes near treeline. Although the potential for Wet Slab avalanches is there, it shouldn't overshadow the more likely problem of Loose Wet avalanches. North-facing near treeline slopes are in a state of transition; there is neither cold, dry snow nor spring-like transitioned snow.

I also dug on north-facing slopes around 12,500 feet. In this area, the snowpack is quite shallow, with only 40 to 60 cm total snow depth. Most of this snow is from the last storm. The top 5 cm is a soft, melt-freeze crust that is supportable to skis but not boots. Below this crust is dry to moist one-finger hard storm snow. Meltwater has only descended 5 to 10 cm deep in the snowpack. Wet Slab avalanche concerns are less than near treeline unless you find a steep snow-covered slope with large rock walls or a cliff above that would generate more meltwater and act differently than slopes without these features.

As mentioned above, I traveled on east-facing slopes above treeline in the middle of the day. The best way to describe the upper snowpack is- a pile of glop. Large pinwheels were coming off my ski turns. If I was traveling in 40 degrees plus terrain, I certainly would have triggered wet avalanches. Fortunately, the crust that was at the surface before the big upslope storm is still hard and intact. If the crust were to melt, wet avalanches would gouge and grow to D2 in size.

Hot. At 13,700 ft midday, there was no wind. Clouds increased in the afternoon.