Northern San Juan
AvalancheColin Mitchell Ann Mellick · Mar 14, 2018 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Broken skies, warm temps and very light winds at the profile site.
Snowpack
The snowpack is slowly transitioning to spring on these shady, northeast-facing paths. At the bottom of the path, the snowpack was around 50 cm of melt-forms with a 10 cm breakable melt-freeze crust. Higher in the path, we found a more winter-like snowpack. Average HS was around 90 cm and consisted of a melt-freeze crust over a thick, homogenous mid-pack slab of rounds and rounding facets. Below this was a layer of small-grained facets. Terrain roughness and inconsistency in depth and distribution of this layer make it an unlikely failure layer for a large slab, though not impossible. Despite the warm temperatures and light overnight freezes we have experienced the past few days, the snowpack was still cold, and there was no evidence of free water below the surface crust.
Avalanche
No new avalanche activity observed along the highway corridor between Silverton and Coal Bank pass