Northern San Juan
AvalancheAmy Pertuz · Dec 21, 2022 · Northern San Juan
Weather
About an inch of new snow fell in the Red Mountain Pass Corridor and temperatures were warmer today. Westerly winds picked up for a period in the afternoon, and were moving this snow onto lee, easterly slopes in in certain places. Light-mod blowing snow at times but the overall volume of transportable snow was not significant.
Snowpack
Almost an inch of new snow fell on a faceted snowpack, and light-moderate blowing snow was creating fresh drifting on easterly aspects by Ophir pass on Wednesay. HS in this area ranged from 40-80cm BTL. Cracking and collapsing were easy to initiate but localized to about 10m, failing on a prominent facet-crust combo 40cm from the surface. A pit on a below treeline westerly slope produced propagating ECT scrores on this same layer (ECTP 9 taps). South facing terrain is beginning to fill in, but most of the coverage is in drifted southeast-facing features. The northwest winds last week were gentle on the alpine terrain in this valley.
Avalanche
no new avalanches seen today