Southern San Juan

Snowpack

Krista Beyer · Mar 4, 2024 · Southern San Juan

Weather

Morning started off with moderate winds, obscured skies, intermittent periods of S1, and 'goose down' low density snow making up the top inch or snow of the recent snowfall. As the morning progressed clouds broke up and sun emerged quickly warming surface snow on solar aspects. Evidence of wind transport observed through the afternoon with flagging on peaks.

Snowpack

New Snow: On westerlies about 4 inches of new observed on a crust. On northeasterlies wind-drifted boot top pow and southeasterlies about 4-5" of soft, but heavy new snow quickly warming when exposed to breaking skies. Northerly aspects maintained cold snow. Snowpack depth: depth near treeline varied from an average of 60cm on westerlies to 200cm on drifted northeasterlies. Below treeline snowpack depths on east aspects dropped to 15-50cm in the vicinity of Lime Creek. North has preserved snowpack depth despite consecutive days of 45 degree highs in the latter half of February. Average depth below treeline on north hovers in the 120-140 cm range. Pit Observations: A pit dug on a NE apsect on a wind drifted below treeline slope around 11,000 ft exhibited similar results to a pit dug on Red Mountain Pass a day prior. instability appears limited to near-surface layers. Pit tests highlighted failures on three different layers. 1) The 3/3/24 dust layer with a CT11 (Q2) and ECTN10 @ 20cm from the surface. 2) A second dust layer that arrived during the 2/27/24 storm CT15 (Q2) and ECTN 15 @ 35cm from the surface. 3) Beneath a pencil hard layer CT25 (Q2) and ECTN 25 @ 50 cm from the surface. No propagating results were observed (different from yesterday's NTL results).