Grand Mesa
AvalancheDylan Craaybeek · Mar 21, 2022 · Grand Mesa
Weather
32F at the trailhead at 12:00 PM with Few clouds and a Light northerly breeze. Sunny all day with clouds coverage over to the east. Temperature seemed to cool down after about 2 and the winds picked up to Moderate northerly gusts with light snow transport.
Snowpack
Northerly and east-facing slopes are still very concerning in this corner of the Grand Mesa forecast zone. North and northeast-facing slopes above 9,000 feet have a 60-90cm slab of F to P- hard snow insulating the January-February dry spell facet layer that is still F to 4F- weak. The snow grains in this layer are showing signs of rounding and bonding and slowly gaining strength. There are no signs that water has percolated to this persistent weak layer on northerly slopes above 9,000 ft. On east-facing slopes this layer still exists but is slightly stronger and has numerous thick melt-freeze crusts (MFcr) within the overlying slab. Ski penetration on easterly slopes below 9,000 feet was around 1-3cm until around 4:00 PM then Ski Pen doubled. Wrap around to northeast-facing slopes at this elevation and the ski pen was around 10cm without the near-surface MFcr's and refrozen Melt Forms. Numerous extended column tests (ECT) showed a very unstable snowpack at all elevations on north to east-facing slopes with around 15 propagating ECT's with scores between 10-20 taps.
Avalanche
Observed several old avalanches, some looked like they were from the past week, all on northerly and east-facing slopes.