Sawatch

Snowpack

Friday morning (1/27), about 20cm new snow at trailhead. About 15cm new at yurt location. Saturday (1/28), wind speeds very efficient at moving snow through day and Saturday night. Significant transport of new snow onto lee aspects. Highly variable snowpack above treeline. Soft slab on Saturday transformed to hard slab on Sunday, while other areas were scoured. Near treeline and below, snowpack averaged 75cm in depth, lower half (35 cm) of well-developed facets (F hardness). Upper half comprised of two layers - 15cm of storm snow (F hardness) above 20 cm of older storm snow (4F hardness). Collapsing everywhere - spooky conditions. Difficult riding conditions - hard to stay on top - frequent collapsing and trap doors brought you to a halt. Sunday (1/29) elected to hike above treeline to Horseshoe Mt (13898'). Enough snow to skin to 12,500'. Most scoured above except for sporadic snow fields on south to east lee aspects. Some supportable, others boot pen up to 50 cm. No signs of instability on these snow fields, with no or little facet layer at base. Looked to be mostly wind drifted snow from recent storms. I still would not trust riding on these on steeper aspects due to hard slab concerns. Calm to light winds up to about 13,200'. Then increasing to sustained 40-50 mph on top of Horseshoe Mt.