Northern San Juan
AvalancheChris Dickson · Mar 27, 2025 · Northern San Juan
Weather
A mostly clear sky in the morning gave way to cumulus build up and some very light snow sprinkles. Temps still rose into the 40s before clouds cooled things off slightly.
Snowpack
I dug on southeast at 11,600' near treeline and found a meter of snow. Here, the morning sun had already moistened the snow surface and water had moved through the entire snowpack with wet grains to the ground. No results in tests. Then I headed around the ridge to a higher southwest-facing slopes at 12,000' and dug in. Here the snowpack was 140cm deep, and was much less affected by recent warming. The top 10cm was a stout melt-freeze crust but below that, it was a series of crust/facet combos with cold snow in between. In tests, I got hard propagation on a layer of larger facets below stiffer slabs of rounded grains, which is a layer of concern for future wet slabs. Then, I headed towards north-facing slopes below treeline. Here the snowpack is dry, but shows significant settlement, stiffening and rounding in the upper pack. The structure remains poor with well-developed depth hoar near the ground, but no reactivity on any weak layers in the upper half of the snowpack.
Avalanche
Several Loose Wet avalanches not previously documented. Also, I observed a Wet Slab avalanche in northeast below treeline terrain that looks like it was triggered by a Loose Wet avalanche, possibly yesterday. The first wet slab observed in this area so far during this warmup.