Dec 11

How Often Does Marble Peak Avalanche at Full Path?

Someone brought this up the other day. Now that Marble Peak is skied so much, it doesn’t seem to produce full-path avalanches. That could change if we get some kind of unusual series of storms that close the road and build up a 2+ meter snowpack. But for now, parking at Lumber Curve within the Marble Peak avy path (where the Anthracite Pass trailhead is) is a workable solution.

We were around the first specifically known time Marble Peak slid full path, February 1995 (reference, Colorado Avalanche Information Center 1994-1995 Annual Report). This class 5 avalanche took out a mature spruce forest above the road, extended the runout into mature aspen forest by 300 feet, and improved the skiing immensely. Quite impressive for an avalanche path that’s not really big in topographical relief, at only around 2,500 vertical feet if you count the runout. What’s interesting is not only did the big one get turned by terrain features, but it ran an impressive distance on lower angled terrain below the road. Google Earth tells the tale.

This long return period avalanche (LRP) occured during a week-long storm cycle that brought the snowpack in the Yule Quarry region to more than 7 feet (84 inches) on the ground (possibly 8 feet in places), with a water equivalent of about 7.3 inches.

According to comments on this post, that have jogged our memory, the Marble Peak path ran full-path again in 2005, during the same cycle that shattered a mature aspen grove on what’s known as “Pre Mud,” the slope just before Mud Gulch as you’re headed up the Yule Quarry Road. Indidentally, the huge 2005 Cleaver slide off Chair Mountain also ran at this time.

What’s the takeaway? Until the snowpack gets quite deep and unskied, in our opinion parking at Lumber Curve is less risky than driving highway 133. But be aware of trends. When the snowpack gets quite deep (we’d define that as more than 6 feet, 72 inches on the ground) and unstable, the Marble Peak path could go big.

At this time (January 2017) we may be approaching that situation.

Dec 08

Nearly Average Snowpack for Christmas

Winter came late — incredibly late. But we’re already up to a fairly average snowpack for the Marble zone. Avalanche people say watch out for north and northeast stuff that the early snows didn’t melt from and morphed into depth hoar. From the looks of it, people are enjoying easterly aspects. Marblecam is working well, with a couple of volunteers cleaning the snow stake board after storms. New wider road and improved parking is helping immensely.

Nov 27

First REAL winter storm today!

This morning, 4 good inches on the storm board and it’s coming down at about 1/2 inch an hours, with a lot of wind. They say this event will continue through Sunday or Monday. Exciting. We are at Marble HQ so we’ll shoot another image of storm board in the afternoon. Check it out via Marblecam link above.

Amazing the Hughes Net sat internet is punching through the cloud cover and snowfall. It even worked before we swept snow off the dish. Still known to not be the most reliable ‘net, but Hughes has exceeded our expectations.

Nov 23

The Slow Winter of 2016-2017

Not sure we’ve ever seen it come this slow and warm. But winter is finally here. Series of November storms are finally laying it down. Silver lining is that, other than on direct north exposures, depth hoar sugar snow below timberline may not form up since the thin layer of early-season snow did not exist on those aspects. That is unless we now get a lengthy dry spell. So we shall see.

Meanwhile, we’ve made some improvements to the webcams. Use link in menu above.