Northern San Juan
AvalancheColin Mitchell · Dec 21, 2022 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Sunny skies and seasonal temperatures with a light, northwest wind.
Snowpack
West Lime has settled 28cm in the past 8 days. Average HS in the path is now around 35 cm. There is a discontinuous wind slab across a majority of the path 5-15 cm thick. Underneath, are another 20-30 cm of Fist-hard facets. In areas without the slab, the snowpack is completely faceted and cohesionless. I didn't get any cracking or collapsing when I climbed up onto the slab, but I did get an ECTP11 with an energetic fracture. Overall, a very poor structure that won't take much of a load. Coal Bank pass was basically bare ground when our December snows arrived, and the snowpack is much better here, with an HS of around 60 cm, and a mostly right-side up snowpack with just a couple cm of old faceted snow at the ground. Boot pen was around 50 cm. Based on ski and skin tracks in the area, it appears the midpack is supportable to skis. No cracking or collapsing and no results on stability tests. I suspect that other areas that were without snow at the beginning of the month have a similar structure. Steep, south-facing paths like Engineer A and East Lime have been losing volume despite the cool temperatures, and are down to an HS of 5-15 cm. They very well may be back to bare ground by Monday or Tuesday if the forecast warm-up materializes.
Avalanche
No new activity observed