Northern San Juan
SnowpackChris Dickson · Mar 3, 2025 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Stormy weather arrived around 11am, with strong southerly winds and periods of S2 snowfall. Obscured skies. That initial pulse deposited around 2" of new snow but then tapered off around 3:00pm.
Snowpack
Overall, a poor structure persists. I dug in a deeper drifted northeast-facing area below a ridgeline and found 170cm of snow. The most recent snowfall has settled into a four-finger slab that makes up almost half of the snowpack, resting over many layers of weak and well-developed facets, and depth hoar near the ground. Snowpack tests below treeline showed that the most recent buried weak layer, formed by the Valentine's Day storm, was basically unreactive. Extended column tests produced no results (ECTX) but with some extra hard hits, I got multiple very hard propagating results (ECTP32 and 33) on the December drought layer.