Northern San Juan

Snowpack

The snow surfaces below treeline are exceptionally weak, especially where a few inches of new snow from earlier in December capped a widespread surface hoar layer, and then faceted away the last two weeks. Weak surfaces continue towards treeline, except for in areas where the sun, or wind, has formed surface crusts. In particular areas, like deeper open slopes near treeline, a 4-finger-hard layer from the Thanksgiving Week storm persists (despite December's faceting) above well-developed facets half-way down the snowpack: the dreaded 11/25 persistent weak layer. I continue to get hard failures on this layer in compression tests and occasionally, propagation in ECTs. Above treeline, its a jigsaw puzzle of stiff windboard, interspersed with wind-ripple, and pocketed with a skiff of near-surface facets, especially around rocky outcrops. I dug pits on northeast, east, and southeast slopes today, and these will likely be some our most dangerous aspects come this weekend (if the snow comes).