Northern San Juan
AvalancheAndrew Temple · Feb 2, 2018 · Northern San Juan
Weather
warm, calm, dry
Snowpack
The snowpack is gradually weakening due to shallow depths and clear and cold-ish nights. However, below treeline, some slab (up to 4 finger) still remains and in isolated deeper and shady terrain features could still produce a persistent slab avy that might propagate a ways. In the alpine, the last wind event formed a variety of hard slabs and highly variable snow surfaces. This old windslab, combined with the total mixed-bag of weak or strong old snow surfaces at its interface, means there's lots of spatial variability, and thus uncertainty about where a human could possibly trigger some nasty hard slab. We've been without a storm for awhile, and shallow depths persist, but, we're still not in that full-facet mode where slabs are less of a concern. Likelihood of triggering is overall low, but structure remains poor and consequence is still too high to start trying to get too creative out there. Today our group triggered a rumbling collapse below TL on a north aspect that sent shooting cracks up and around a terrain feature for over 60'.
Avalanche
No recent avalanches