Front Range

Snowpack

Mike Wallace · Nov 1, 2017 · Front Range

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Weather

10/26/17, -2C, Sky SCT, No precip, Winds 15-20-WSW.

Snowpack

Pit was about 60 cm deep with snowpack getting deeper the further into the path we probed. Would guess approaching 70-80 cm deep in and just below the start zone. Top 15 cm is wind packed and not quite 1F in stiffness. Below this is a Pen crust about 5 cm thick. A 5 cm Fist minus facet layer is sandwiched between this and another Pen hard crust about 15 cm thick. Below the lower crust is our early Oct snow and it seems to be faceting slowly as we only noticed small facets (.5-1mm) with some rounding evident. Interestingly, the crystals from about 10cm down to the ground seemed moist and had a tendency to stick together when squeezed. Suspecting air temperature causing this, fresh crystals were excavated from within the pack yielding the same result.