Grand Mesa
SnowpackColin Mitchell · Dec 16, 2014 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Breezy, cool and overcast. Snow showers in the morning had come to an end by the time I arrived. Gusty southwesterly winds were stripping the snow off of the trees, and moving a lot of snow near the snow surface.
Snowpack
The snow pack on Grand Mesa is getting deeper, but the overall structure has not improved. Wind is working on the surface and creating wind crusts and small slabs while stripping many open areas. Near-treeline elevations received around a foot of new snow since Saturday, and it is settling into a slab. This slab rests on a layer of fist-hard facets. Below that is a pencil-hard slab formed by the November snows, and at the base, well-formed large depth hoar crystals. These crystals are just barely showing signs of rounding, but are still completely unconsolidated and have the classic striated, cup-like depth hoar form. This layer produced a propagating fracture on an ECT test ECTP15 SC, and was likely the culprit in the collapses that I experienced travelling the meadows above the cliff bands.