Front Range
SnowpackAustin DiVesta · Nov 13, 2022 · Front Range
Weather
Temperatures at the parking lot were in the mid-20s with calm winds. Moving closer to the bowl, we found light winds out of the west for the rest of the day. Winds along the ridgelines remained light. We saw no snow being transported.
Snowpack
We traveled from around 10,500ft to 12,600ft, mostly on easterly through southerly-facing slopes. Snow height varied from 10cm to approximately 1 meter deep (in a wind-drifted area). While we found somewhat continuous slopes on easterly slopes, the winds did a number on north and west-facing slopes, leaving them almost entirely bare. The snow surface varied as well, from a supportable Pencil hard wind-slab to Fist-soft facets to bare rocks in places. I dug a quick hand pit on an east slope at about 11,700ft and with a snow height of 25cm with several different layers, including a hard (pencil hardness) melt-freeze crust on the ground. An Extended Column Test produced a result of a non-propagation fracture (ECTN6 at 20cm). We dug another pit around a deeper wind-drifted slope that produced an audible whumpf under our skis. We found a snow depth of 104cm, with most of the layers being wind-packed rounds in varying degrees of decomposing. For most of this snowpit, we saw a relatively stiff (Pencil and 1 Finger hand hardness scale) slab with two distinct layers of softer (4 Finger and Fist hand hardness) mixed in the ground. Extended Column Tests produced a couple of interesting results: one non-propagation result (ECTN22 at 83cm) and a full propagation result (ECTP14 at 83cm) on the upper slab over the first weak layer that is faceting. It was unclear where exactly this audible whumpf happened in the snowpack; this suggests that while unlikely to trigger an avalanche, there is still a chance out there.