Front Range
SnowpackRyan Zarter · Mar 9, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
Overcast skies this morning on Willow Creek Pass with strong west winds and light snow. When I arrived in the Cameron Pass area skies were overcast on the pass, winds were strong and gusty out of the southwest, and light snow was falling. Winds eased up a bit while I was in the field, and by the time I was driving down from the pass snow had stopped.
Snowpack
On east aspects below treeline, the snow surface was soft and the midpack supportable to skis. As I moved around to southeast and south aspects, there was about an inch of new snow on on top of a melt-freeze crust. Digging into the snow on a southeast aspect below treeline, I found several melt-freeze crusts in the upper third of the snowpack. The most concerning layer I found was about crust-facet-crust sandwich about a layer down. I got propagating ECT results on the facets in this sandwich. I found ice columns amongst th facets in the foot or so below the sandwich layer--probably from a warm spell when this layer was closer to the snow surface, as I did not find any evidence of water percolating down from the upper snowpack.