Grand Mesa
SnowpackJewel Campbell · Mar 10, 2024 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Clear day with a few light clouds in the west by afternoon. Calm in the morning with a south/southwest breeze picking up by midday. Temps were in the 30s
Snowpack
The snowpack was nearly 2 meters deep on north aspects, and 3 meters deep on wind-loaded east aspects. On north aspects I found a quit settled and stiff snowpack with obvious persistent weak layers between pencil-hard slabs of facets and rounding facets. There was a melt-freeze crust with thin facets below from late Feb/early March which was in northwest-north-east pits, but did not propagate in snowpack tests. The layer of buried surface hoar from early Feb was about a meter deep and unreactive. On south aspects a surface melt-freeze crust had completely softened by late morning. 20-30cm down there was a 10cm thick, knife-hard melt-freeze crust. I did not find percolation tubes or free water in the south aspects, however the softened surface crust was moist.