Front Range
SnowpackIan Fowler · Apr 4, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
Snow was on and off throughout the day with occasional heavier periods. Winds were light and varied from the east and southwest.
Snowpack
Snow cover was thin on southerlies below treeline and increased to about a meter on easterlies. Stepping out of skis below treeline on an easterly aspect my foot penetrated to the ground punching easily through the couple of crusts that were present. In compression tests, these layers were too weak to propagate a failure. I observed open slopes near and above treeline on easterly through southerly aspects. All these aspects had a variety of crust layers in the snowpack and were reactive at some level in Extended Column Tests (ECT). At 12000 feet, as I traveled just past easterly, I found these crusts quickly weakened, and by northeast, I could no longer feel them with a probe. On an east-southeasterly aspect, I dug next to a small wind slab avalanche from April 1. About 40cm below the surface above the third crust, a layer of facets propagated in extended column tests. As we ascended the southern ridge of Machebeuf, we felt some significant collapses in the snowpack. Upon investigation, we found a little over a meter of snow and got ECT results on a thin weakening crust down about 60cm above the basal facets. There was minor wind-loading and cracking close to ridgelines, but it was very localized to skis and only about 5cm deep.