Front Range
AvalancheAustin DiVesta · Feb 5, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
A warm February day with scattered high-altitude clouds for much of the day. Winds were calm for most of the day except for ridge tops, and in the alpine, they were moderate to strong out of the west like you would expect from Rocky Mountain National Park.
Snowpack
Below treeline on the southeast and south-facing had a breakable 2-3cm melt-freeze crust in the more open areas, but as I moved over to more east-facing terrain, the crust went entirely away. Even with warm temperatures today, I did not notice any surface warming even in the afternoon as I descended. The only slopes that showed signs of rapid warming were westerly-facing terrain next to the road with rollerballs but no signs of wet loose avalanches. At the upper elevations, I found a mixed bag of surface conditions from Pencil hard slabs that you could not get a ski edge into where your ski penetration was 10-15cm. Snow heights mainly ranged from 130cm to more than 250cm. Much like the Eastside of Rocky Mountain National Park, snow heights could vary a lot in a 50-foot radius from bare ground to a snowpack over 2 meters. In my snowpit on a north-facing slope at the upper end of treeline, I mainly found 4 Finger hard snow near the ground. I found the two layers of Fist hard snow in the upper 30cm of the snowpack at the surface or buried just under a relatively soft wind slab. Extended Column Tests did not produce any propagation results (ECTX). Even in the scree field, the basal facet layer was not as well developed as I expected.
Avalanche
Ski cut a small test slope near treeline which produced a small avalanche.