Front Range
AvalancheIan Fowler · Jan 5, 2024 · Front Range
Weather
Winds were swirling but seemed generally out of southeast to southwest, and it was snowing most of the day.
Snowpack
We found a surprising amount of new snow in this area, which was mostly light and fluffy. Below treeline the snowpack was often completely unsupportable especially in areas where people had not traveled. Near and above treeline bonding was poor to the extent that we ended up booting a couple of times as the snow would just slide away from the old surface, which was firm and wind-pressed. Faceting on the old surface was not very obvious, and it was very thin or mixed in with the new snow. On a northerly slope near the treeline, we had over 1.5 meters of snow consistently, and this would seem representative of other slopes holding consistent coverage. We dug on a slope in this area and found two weak layers with a crust in the middle down about 60cm. These layers were unreactive in a Compression Test (CT) but, when pried on, came off as a clean planar surface. A Propagation Saw Test (PST) on this layer gave a cut length of 90cm from a possible 100cm, showing this layer is pretty well bonded. We did not observe any surface hoar when we looked in various locations.
Avalanche
The avalanche looked like it had started as a small windslab that had entrained a lot of surface snow. Debris was 1 meter deep in places.