Southern San Juan
SnowpackChris Bilbrey · Jan 9, 2023 · Southern San Juan
Weather
A mild day with overcast skies.
Snowpack
We traveled on below treeline slopes up to about 11,300 feet. Warmer temperatures and time away from a major storm load have allowed the snowpack to find a little bit of equilibrium. The slab above older, faceted snow continues to settle into a thick, stiff slab. This is helping to compress weak snow layers and those layers are slowly becoming harder. This has mostly diminished signs of unstable snow such as cracking and audible collapses from most slopes. However, each subsequent small storm or drifted load after the holiday storm continues to provoke large natural avalanches near and above the treeline. This behavior confirms that buried weak snow layers have the potential to fail. The type of terrain we're observing natural avalanches suggests that parts of slopes, where the snowpack or the overlying slab is shallower, are likely spots to trigger a dangerous slide. Slopes that avalanched in early December or during the first half of the holiday storm could harbor shallow enough slabs to behave differently than deeper slopes. On slopes where the full snowpack is intact, and persistent weak layers are around a meter deep or more, the initial signs of a strengthening snowpack are starting to emerge.