Northern San Juan

Snowpack

We toured for almost 6 hours yesterday on RMP. Had to be dragged off the mountain after skiing 20-24" powder all day! Amazing conditions for late April. We did trigger a small wind-loaded pocket on a lee aspect (Prospect) that took one of our skiers for a short ride/lost equipment ... but all is well and recovered. Other than that, bonding seemed solid between new snow and old hard melt-freeze/sun crust/dust surface. New snow did not have a discernible dust layer, although some aspects had "dirty" snow that may have embedded some of the loose dust that was in the air prior to the snowstorm. There also appeared to be a weak layer within the storm snow, but did not evaluate further. It was too obscured to observe any natural activity, although it looked like maybe the south face on Mt. Abrams had slid?