Front Range
SnowpackColeman Kane · Nov 13, 2022 · Front Range
Weather
Few clouds with no precip. Winds were light from the WSW. There was evidence of previous blowing snow, but there wasn't anymore snow to transport today.
Snowpack
First pit dug at 10,806' on a N aspect below tree line. There was a thin wind skin on the surface. Snowpack is still thin (37 cm) but there isn't enough of a slab for the depth hoar to be troublesome yet. I did find a layer of faceting round crystals above the depth hoar, but not enough to propagate. Second pit dug at 10,873' NNE aspect above tree line. I dug into an obvious wind deposit that was 85cm deep. The majority of the snowpack was rounded grains with differences in hardness in each layer. I found a melt-freeze crust 57cm up from ground. I'm not sure if this is the rain crust that has been found closer to Steamboat; I forgot my 30x loupe so couldn't get a great look at it. I would have expected to find faceted crystals on either side of this crust, but they may not have had time to form yet. This layer did fail in a compression test (CT20 PC) but not in an ECT. While the first ECT did not fail at all, 5 more taps produced an ECTP at the depth hoar interface.