Northern San Juan
AvalancheDominic Rickicki · Dec 14, 2023 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Calm and warm near treeline. Above treeline winds were light from the West, no blowing snow. Mostly buebird out there with intermittent clouds rolling around ridgetops. we got a little socked in at our high point.
Snowpack
Consistently 10-12 inches of new snow, pretty sweet preserved stellars with no signs of mechanical rounding. As the morning progressed the sun was making pretty quick work of the new snow on solar aspects and it was becoming sticky around 1030am. No cracking in the new snow. On E and SE aspects we found little collapsing and had a generally supportable snowpack underfoot. Anytime we rolled over to more northerly terrain the underfoot support went away and we could feel our skis collapsing into the old snow. A couple minor whumpfs were observed in this terrain. Prominent ridges had little to no old snow.
Avalanche
We saw many point releases in the new snow on all aspects. We saw many natural slab avalanches that appeared to have released mid-storm on all aspects except for westerlies. Most of these were in northerly terrain.