Front Range
SnowpackAnonymous · Jan 29, 2016 · Front Range
Weather
Clear, few high clouds, light wind out of N
Snowpack
From 1/28/2016. Found the buried layer of facets that has been talked about in your forecasts. Top of Z chute. N/NE facing ~11,800. Dug 2 pits- one skiers R line, one skier L line. CT12 Q2 on the facet layer about 12 inches down. Second pit was an "old" pit someone dug a day or 2 ago. Caught my eye since there were no tracks on Z. Someone else dug and made a no ski decision? Redug a column and shovel shear popped on the same layer of facets. Facets comprised about 2 inches and really granular and reminiscent of "sugar" you usually see at the bottom. Snowpack top to bottom: about 2-3 inches of new soft, about 10 inches of F hard, then the 2 inches of facets. Didn't look below that because the pit results were all we needed to decide to not ski the slope. Also, quite a bit of surface hoar and rime-type crystals on ground vegetation on almost all aspect.