Sawatch

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg, Ethan Greene · Mar 30, 2020 · Sawatch

Weather

Scattered cloud cover at times with plenty of sunshine breaking through. Winds were drifting snow at ridgetop building cornices but not loading slopes.

Snowpack

A supportable crust sits under an inch of new snow on the easterly slopes that we traveled. The new snow became moist below treeline, but no rollerballing observed. On an east-facing near-treeline slope we found a snowpack depth of 130 cm with a propagating result in an ECT on 23 taps. The failure was on facets on top of crust that formed around March 18. The slab is still thin, 25 cm thick, and soft with intermixed crusts. On non-wind-loaded slopes such as this one, avalanches breaking on this weak layer would not be concerning. If this structure was present on a wind-loaded easterly-facing slope, it would be more concerning. We also got a propagating result after removing some of the slab on 29 taps at 50 cm down which is the interface between early season snow and the big February storm. The snowpack is really weak below this interface. A big storm would bring on big avalanches.---It seems the snowpack has gone one of two ways in the last month- It is either more stable and stronger where it has transitioned to a spring time regime or where this hasn't happened, the snowpack has weakened and basal layers have not improved.