Front Range
AvalancheAustin DiVesta Drew Gibson · Mar 18, 2023 · Sawatch
Weather
Cold, blue skies and light to moderate winds out of the west.
Snowpack
Around Georgia Pass, we noted that snow heights varied from 80cm to over 2 meters on wind-drifted slopes near treeline. The apline terrain around Mt. Guyot's east-through south-facing slopes held areas of drifted snow. These areas were around cliff bands and gullies, but the vast majority of this snow looked very textured from the snow. We noted a melt-freeze crust that was 2-3cm thick below about an 3-5cm of new snow from a couple of days ago. We purposely dug a pit on a shallower east-facing slope around some rocks. There was a stiff 1 Finger slab resting on top of a weak Fist hard basal layer. In the Extended Column Test, this produced an easy result (ECTP10@ 0cm.) A thing to note about this result. There was a rock in about a quarter of the column and we purposely tapped from the shallower side, as someone would more easily affect the weak layer from this area. While most areas contained some sort of melt-freeze crust, it was still somewhat supportable on a machine. When we moved into the Middle Fork Sawn River, and found a somewhat deeper snowpack with snow heights ranging from 120 to 250cm. This area had a thicker melt-freeze crust. On a west-facing slope, we noted a 2-5cm breakable melt-freeze crust, with the rest of the snowpack made up of weak faceted snow. We would sink about 60cm into a 130cm snow pack while walking. On a north-facing slope above treeline we dug a pit in an areas with about 2 meters of drifted snow. We found a mostly right side up snowpack with a couple of wind skins on top of recent snow that was not faceted yet. This mid-pack was made up of mostly 1 Finger to Pencil hard snow for most. We did not get any results in our Extended Colum Test (ECTX).
Avalanche
We noted several small avalanches on east-facing slopes around wind-loaded slopes with cornices.