Northern San Juan

Avalanche

Bill Nalli · Jan 13, 2020 · Northern San Juan

Weather

Light snowfall continued until afternoon. Zonal flow seemed to favor the central part of the North San Juan's with broken skies on the Dallas Divide and Telluride and a short distance south snowfall continued until about 2pm. New snow today near Lizard Head was 3 to 4 inches. Moderate west wind continued to transport snow all day.

Snowpack

Arduous trailbreaking and a couple spooky collapses kept me below treeline today. Storm snow in this area over the last weak measuring 10 to 14 inches on top of a breakable sun crust made for slow upward progress. Once near treeline and on steep slopes, the fragile snowpack structure on southerly facing slopes made its presence known. Localized, en echelon cracking became the norm with every step once above about 11,200 feet. As I approached treeline, collapsing got larger. I decided to turn around and descend the same way I came in. Southeast aspects continue to display obvious signs of instability. In late afternoon visibility improved and a few natural D2 avalanches were seen that recently occurred. One was directly below Blackface proper on a southeast aspect and at least two others were seen on the same aspect above the town of Ophir. See photos. The snowpack on southeast aspects is 100 to 130 centimeters deep and consists of a series of crust/facet combinations all the way to the ground. There is now a new load of one to two feet of snow on top of it that has pushed the scales closer to the tipping point. All southerly aspects steeper than 35 degrees should be approached with caution.

Avalanche

Southeast aspects continue to get overloaded by moderate incremental loads.