Sawatch
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Nov 23, 2025 · Sawatch
Weather
Mild with light snow showers throughout the morning. No accumulation. Winds were calm.
Snowpack
Near treeline northerly-facing slopes have a snowpack that ranges from 17 to 25 cm deep. Although there is no slab and currently no chance of avalanches, the snow cover is consistent enough across northerly-facing slopes to form a slope-wide weak layer. The snowpack is thin and soft, with fist-hard snow from top to bottom. Starting from the bottom is a 5 cm thick layer of 2 to 4 mm depth hoar. The middle layer is November storm snow that is facticing. It's still very small-grained, but it is generally cohesionless. The top layer consists of more recent snow that is also faceting, but to a lesser extent than the layers below. In one gully, in a small 5 ft by 5 ft patch, I was able to get short running shooting cracks. These cracks were only one to two feet long, but they indicate that when this snowpack is loaded, we can expect avalanches. As I moved above treeline, a harder layer of previously drifted snow capped the depth hoar. The weakest layer in the case was large facets above the deteriorating wind slab. Southerly-facing slopes are completely bare to 12,000 ft and above. No snowpack and no weak layers. East-facing slopes are bare below treeline, with increasingly patchy snow at higher elevations. I didn't travel on east-facing slopes, but it looks like coverage is not consistent enough above treeline for a consistent weak layer. We'll have to keep an eye on this with future fieldwork.