Northern San Juan

Snowpack

drove from durango to ridgway yesterday (wed. may 5) and saw tons of wet slides driving back to durango around 4pm on red mtn pass. prob most ran 500-800 but some longer. i would say i saw slides on just about every aspect but noticed a large crown break below a cliff band on a north facing aspect in that massive basin just below red mountain pass before the big turn that leads to the flats of red mtn creek. it looked at least 5 feet deep and there were skier tracks surrounding the break on both sides but it is hard to tell if it was human-triggered or a natural. it pretty much ran to the ground but wasnt that long. overall while things seem to be transitioning to spring down here in the san juans it is still a rather scary and active snowpack. also did the naked lady last saturday on mt snowden and found an absurd amount of loaded sugar-like snow 2/3 of the way up the couloir. we got to a point where we litrerally were going nowhere and couldnt make it too the top. even with an ice axe we just couldnt dig into anything that wouldnt give. we dug a pit at the bottom of the couloir before booting up and after the first foot or so of new storm snow, once we got below that we dug about five feet and still could not get to the next layer.