Sawatch

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · May 9, 2019 · Sawatch

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Weather

Calm winds with mostly overcast skies and few snow showers. Snowfall picked up around 2:30 PM with periods of inch/hour rates.

Snowpack

New snow only amounted to 3 to 4 inches. There was no cracking in the new snow and no evidence of any wind drifting. I dug on an east-facing above-treeline slope and found a snow depth of 2 meters. A small layer of wet snow sits under thick, and supportable melt-freeze crust with no propagating results on this layer. No other layers of concern.---Near treeline I got a few collapses on the layer identified above. I also talked to another skier that was on more of a northwest-facing slope and he found a very similar setup with collapsing only in this narrow elevation band.