Aspen
SnowpackDylan Craaybeek · Mar 13, 2024 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Warm and light snow with light to moderate gusts along the ridgeline.
Snowpack
The early February PWL and a mid-February weak layer of rounding facets are the only two layers of concern in this area as the basal facets are gaining strength and insulated by over a meter of mostly P hard and 1F hard slabs (on the hand hardness scale). While the mid-February weak layer shows propagating failures on extended column tests (ECTs), modified ECTs with longer columns show no failures on this layer and we have not seen any avalanches fail on this layer in this area that I know of. The buried surface hoar continues to be the main PWL of concern and is getting more stubborn, mostly from decreasing sensitivity to triggers. The dust layer has settled into a layer of rounded polycrystals at the bottom of the early March storm snow and is reactive in shovel shear tests but not in long column tests.