Sawatch
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Dec 16, 2022 · Sawatch
Weather
Cold and windy. It was -9 on the car thermometer at the trailhead. Skies were clear in the Arkansas valley but up on the pass, clouds were hanging around the peaks for most of the day. There was more sun and less cloud in the afternoon.
Snowpack
The snowpack was supportable to skis at all elevations which was quite surprising. This was my first time around Monarch this winter and I was surprised to find similar snow heights to Cottonwood Pass and Indy Pass. Also similar is the one-finger hard portion of the slab that sits directly on fist-hard facets that formed during the November drought. On easterly slopes, there is a crust/facet sandwich beneath the slab. Although ski penetration was only about 30 cm, boot penetration was to the ground.---Below treeline, collapsing and shooting cracks was non-stop. It was easier to get collapses compared to near treeline because the slab was softer and thinner. Some cracks were a few hundred feet wide and connected through not-dense, but not-sparse treed terrain. The poor snowpack structure is well-documented throughout the state, but places with a snow depth less than 1 meter and a slab that is one-finger hard and well connected is, in my view, the worst of the worst. It's like this from Independence Pass south. Near Fremont Pass, the snowpack is much shallower and in sheltered areas, the slab is much softer.---Back to snowpack obs- I dug on a west-facing slope below treeline and found a 90 cm deep snowpack. The bottom 35 cm was faceted with a 55 cm slab on top. It was so cold I performed one of those old-fashioned compression tests instead of an ECT. I got a result of CT3 35 cm up from the ground. On a near treeline east-facing slopes, the snow height was also 90 cm. I got an extended column test result of ECTP21 and a propagation saw test result of 30/100 END. This was 30 cm up from the ground on fist-hard facets sitting on a thin melt-freeze crust. I also noted a layer of near surface facets sandwiched between the storm snow that fell this week, and the snow from the storm that ended on Dec. 9th. These facets weren't very soft although they did still propagate a fracture in an ECT. This layer is kind of a distracting injury and not really something to worry about for now with what is beneath.---Finally, of note were that collapses were much less prevalent near treeline, but when I did get one, it was very big.