Sawatch

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Apr 6, 2023 · Sawatch

Weather

Beautiful day with clear skies and cool temperatures. There was a cold breeze at ridgetop in the morning. During the afternoon winds were calm and temperatures felt warmer.

Snowpack

There were no wet avalanche concerns where I traveled. There just isn't much new snow to wet from the recent storm. There were about 2 inches of recent snow on top of a fairly stout crust on most aspects and elevations. It is going to take warmer weather and warm nights to break down the near-surface melt-freeze crust before we see wet avalanche issues. Once that breaks down, the concern is for meltwater to impact the small-grained facets that are 40 cm down on a melt-freeze crust. This doesn't look to happen with good overnight freezes, so right now, the concern is triggering dry persistent slab avalanches on this layer. I only dug one snowpit on a southwest-facing near treeline slope. I found the same exact structure within the upper snowpack that I found on April 5 near an avalanche in Officers Gulch (near Vail Pass) and also on April 6 near the 10th Mtn Hut. The snow height where I dug was 185 cm.