Northern San Juan
SnowpackAndrew Temple · Feb 16, 2013 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Beautiful clear day luring people out to the steeper slopes...
Snowpack
Chris Landry and I headed up toward the Senator Beck Basin crux, not expecting to be able to travel up it unless it looked stripped. It did not. We were wary of the slope due to reports last week of "thundering collapses" upon approach to it. We dug a pit on an adjacent SE slope just below the crux to evaluate the weakness of the 1/10 and 1/26 interfaces as well as the DH. In our HS 96 pit we found a problematic matrix of crusts, facets, and stiff slabs. Some strengthening was observed below upper crusts where flow fingers were present but inferred that presence of those will be very aspect and slope dependent. Stability tests showed a very easy shear above the lowest crust in the snowpack and some moderate results in the interface 21 cm. down from the surface. We observed a significant volume of snow on the crux headwall and potential uptrack and did not approach any higher than our pit location. Incidentally, we talked two other parties out of their plan to ascend the pitch that day with some historical info about the capabilities of that path and the snowpack data we collected that day. Would still agree with CON for near TL on S-SE due to high degree of uncertainty over the landscape and the destructive potential of a triggered slide.