Southern San Juan
SnowpackChris Bilbrey · Jan 11, 2022 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Warm, sunny day with light alpine winds.
Snowpack
Snow that fell over the weekend is starting to facet on northerly and east-facing slopes. Depth of facets were not deep enough to pose loose sluffing concerns today, but could become our next problem once buried by a new storm slab. Many alpine slopes were wind-pressed and battered. Southerly-facing slopes are showing the effects of recent warm temperatures with moist grains and crust around 2 inches thick. Small, faceted grains have developed below the crust on east and southeast-facing slopes near and above treeline. This will be something to keep an eye on with subsequent storm loading. We targeted a shallower part of a north-facing slope just above the treeline to evaluate sensitivity of weak facets in a more likely rider-triggered part of a slope. There, we found the overlying slab (4F to 1F to P, top to bottom) around a meter deep above well-preserved facets and depth hoar. We observed hard failures in both Compression and Extended Column test with the hard block ending up in our laps after failure in ECTs. This suggest that while slabs continue to become more stubborn to trigger, weak snow remains reactive and the size of the avalanche has potential to be large in size - especially at upper elevations.