Sangre de Cristo

Snowpack

Hello, I climbed Wheeler and Walter peaks yesterday and snowboarded down. Here are my snowpack observations. We skinned from the Taos ski area hiker lot up to just before Williams lake. From there we turned left and began skinning up the gully/avalanche path that tops out at the saddle between Wheeler and Walter. We were able to skin up almost the entire gully until the last 2-3 hundred vertical feet where we booted up the last bit to the saddle and then walked the ridge to the two summits. We descended our ascent line. We dug a pit at 12,071' when we were considering leaving the gully for steeper terrain on the west face of Wheeler. The pit was on a WNW aspect and was 118cm deep. The pit revealed two easily noticible weak layers; basil facets at the base of the snowpack and a distinctive 7-8 cm deep faceted layer that was buried about 60 cm off the ground. The basil facets did not fail on any test. The buried faceted layer 60cm off the ground seemed to be the problem layer here. The first block we cut failed while I was cutting out the back with my saw. It popped out with energy on a smooth planar surface (0Q1). I did a column compression test on the next column which scored a 11Q1, failing on the mid pack faceted layer discussed above. That was followed by an ECT 29 Q2 score again failing on the same weak layer. Based on these results we chose to stay in the gully on pitch angles 31 degrees and lower. We observed no cracking, collapsing, or whumping and saw no avalanche activity on similar slopes in the drainage. We did observe one soft slab avalanche that had run adjacent to the ski area across the valley since the last storm cycle. The slide was on the hike to peak at the ski area but just out of bounds (ENE aspect?). I would guess from my vantage that the slide ran 100 to 130 feet wide and about twice the vertical. It was too far away for me to venture a guess at the depth of the slide. I would probably call it a D2-R2 in size and destructive capability. Overall we felt conditions were very yellow light. We were comfortable skinning up the lower angle parts of the slide path and being below steeper terrain since we knew there was no one above us. WE would not have been comfortable crossing through ave starting zones or pitches 34 degrees and steeper. I hope this helps out. Thanks for the info I got here the other day before I drove down from Co.