Northern San Juan

Snowpack

The NW-SW aspects have been battered by wind recently, resulting in poor skiing on that half of the compass. The South-facing ridgelines have touchy 2-3' deep windslabs that have formed in the last 48-36 hrs, and other lee slopes have a moderate new load in spots. We descended from Putney into Prospect gulch and found amazing hero-snow skiing. On our skin back out of the basin we ascended low-angle SE-facing slopes. A pit on a SE slope showed some very concerning layer combos. Our HS 125 pit showed a crust/facet layer about 30 cm down with two thin M/F crusts closely sandwiched together with large, well-developed facets in between. Got a CT-12 Q1 in this layer. Lower down, there is a strong M/F crust bonded to the bottom of the Jan 10 slab that was shearing easily on the facets below. Got a CT 19 Q2 in this layer. These problematic layers were verified as we continued to skin up the existing skin track, and got a HUGE rolling collapse on a loaded SE slope. So far, not seeing a real transition to MOD on SE any elevation, or on due S above TL, due to ease of triggering and potential for up to D3 avalanches.