February 7

Gobblers Knob

Elevations, slope angles and aspects

6200-10200', angles over 35°, north facing aspects.

Snow conditions

A inch or so of settled snow at lower elevations + an inch up higher.

Off aspects had a thin melt freeze crust from warming.

Surface hoar was found scattered around near the creek a t lower elevations, in sheltered areas at mid elevation and patches on the shoulder of Gobblers.

meadow-hoar

Wind from the last few days had scoured the face with crossloaded shallow drifts and scouring, widespread.

winded

Weather

Partly cloudy skies, moderate temperatures and light wind.

Avalanche activity

I went to see how big the slide on January 20-21 was.

gobblers

Although it had snowed several times and the face was horribly winded....slide was from the nose(middle of pic) across the face to the shoulder.

I couldn't tell if the wnw face of Davis gulch had slid.

The shoulder ran to the lower bench with the nose and bobslid running into and continuing down the main gully, about 2500 vertical feet.

Debris was covered by 8 or so inches of windblown snow.

Apparently the Cabin run also slid around the same time.

doom

I also had a good view of upper Mineral Fork(room of doom) which avalanched near the end of the east wind period following the last little "storm".

doom

It looks like it took out most of the bowl, wnw through east facing, gouging to dirt in the middle.

santi

Another pocket was observed in what I call Santiago. It may have released sympathetic to the large slide or was a crossloaded pocket from the wind.

Evaluation

Stability was good with no cracking or collapsing.

Tthere may be a few lingering active wind drifts, and those could release into older snow.

Weather guessers are waffling on whether it's gonna snow but, future instability would be dependent on amount, wind and bonding.

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