Front Range
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Jan 1, 2024 · Front Range
Weather
Cloudy skies kept temperatures in the teens. Light winds from the north.
Snowpack
I observed widespread surface hoar formation up to 6mm in size on the northerly, southerly, and easterly slopes I traveled on. Light winds and cloud cover were keeping these grains intact while I was in the field. In some places, the most recent dense, wind-drifted snow was on the surface, but most areas had a layer of soft, faceted snow at the surface just below the surface hoar layer. This soft, faceted layer ranged from 2cm to 10cm thick. Where I dug on an east-facing slope the basal facets were either unreactive or you had to use multiple blows from the shoulder to get a propagating result in an Extended Column Test (ECT). In a layer of faceted snow below the most recent drifted snow, I got a propagating result after taps from the elbow. Most recent avalanche activity in this area ran on this interface. In this pit, the new slab was one-finger hard on the Hand Hardness Scale. In many other recent pits, this upper drifted layer is only four-finger hard and ECTs had non-propagating results. The upper snowpack in this location was composed of three distinct drifted or crust layers with weak snow in between them. Only the uppermost layer had results in ECT and Compression Tests (CTs). Below these slab/weak sandwiches, there was a faceting 40cm thick slab above the depth hoar layer at the ground. A pit on a southeast-facing slope had a very similar structure. On the northerly slope I dug on, there was no result in an ECT, but this was due to the overall weakness of the snowpack in the pit location. This northerly slope quickly transitioned from a near structureless 60cm snowpack to a snowpack composed mostly of wind-stiffened layers that are closer to 100cm deep. While there was some concerning structure in the thinner area - a new dense slab on very weak, large faceted grains - it seemed isolated and discontinuous across the slope.