Front Range
AvalancheIan Fowler · Dec 2, 2025 · Front Range
Weather
Strong northerly winds, clear skies.
Snowpack
Below the treeline, the snow was unconsolidated, and there was no base. Had I been skiing uphill, travel on skis would have been fine, but I would have been hitting rocks on the descent. The bridges over the creek were snow-covered but thin. Near and above treeline the snowpack was very variable. Areas of bare ground to waist-deep drifts. In many areas, there was a firmer, 1 finger, lower snowpack with fist-hard new snow and variable thicknesses of wind slab at the surface. The surface slab broke easily during the first tap in Compression Tests, but the results from Extended Column Tests did not propagate. In some locations on the east and northeast, there was a thin 3-5cm layer of basal facets, but they were not consistently distributed, and I never found an area where they were not regularly disturbed by the underlying ground roughness.
Avalanche
Triggered by foot small D1 avalanche NE aspects.