Front Range
SnowpackSpencer Logan · Dec 12, 2018 · Front Range
Weather
Broken skies until noon. Clouds lowered quickly, with light snow starting. Winds were gusts all morning, with light drifting.
Snowpack
NE-E-SE below treeline:
Ski pen was 10-20 cm, boot pen to the ground. The mid-pack layers are faceting and losing strength. No sign of instability.
N-NE-E-SE near treeline:
Lots of recently wind-drifted snow forming a layer 5-15 cm thick. Some minor cracking in this layer. The older, wind-drifted layers of snow in the middle of the snowpack have become quite variable in strength. I caused one very large, rumbling collapse on an east aspect where the older layers were still 1F hard.