Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Dug a pit at TL on a NE aspect. Around 200cm deep, with the bottom 50cm depth hoar. The middle 100cm is the slab from Jan to early March. The top 45cm is from our last storm. There were two interfaces of note: the first 20cm from surface where the dust and recent facets were present in this particular location. Here, the dust was in the middle of the new storm snow. The second was the interface between the new storm slab and the old thicker slab. Both had easy shears with shovel shear test, but on CT the first layer 20 cm down failed at 8 taps-Q2. The second interface did not fail on CT test. Initially the new snow bonded quite well to the old surface but with our recent cold temps faceting has occured both at dust layer and at old/new interface. Important to note, this dust layer has been found at the old/new interface in other locations, but also containing recent facets. The old slab where we were was quite strong being 1F to P hard for most of it. It is still sitting on quite the pile of depth hoar unfortunately. Still a concern is where one may find the weak, thin margin of slab and trigger a slide.