Front Range
SnowpackAustin DiVesta · Mar 2, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
A beautiful, blue sky day with very little wind. Temperatures remained below freezing but with some strong solar input. Did not notice any snow moving around along ridgetops.
Snowpack
The lower elevation areas on southerly-facing slopes have a solid melt-freeze crust, even shaded tree areas, which is about 5 cm-10 cm thick. Throughout my travels today, I saw a couple of inches of new snow on all aspects. As I climbed to the near treeline elevation band, I found snow heights averaging 100-130cm with wind-drifted areas at around 200cm. I dug a snowpit around 11,500ft on an east-facing slope. I found 15-20cm of somewhat new snow on the surface. I noted a layer of near-surface facets about 30cm down from the surface that formed around the last whole week in February. The mid-pack comprised mainly facets in varying degrees of strength around 4 and 1 Finger on the Hand Hardness scale. Towards the bottom of the snowpack, with no surprise, there are very well-developed chained depth hoar crystals around 3-5mm in size from our November storm. An Extended Column Test produced hard propagating (ECTP24 & 28 at 5cm) but did not see any results in the upper snowpack. The strength of the basal layer is gaining strength, but it still isn’t something to be trusted quite yet. This zone or area still needs time to heal. At the upper end of near treeline and above treeline, there were wind-affected slopes with smooth planar surfaces and others with textured surfaces. The strong winds from last week are creating thick cohesive slabs and the structure of this snowpack right now. It is a good reminder to give any steep wind-drifted slope space as that is where you are most likely to trigger an avalanche. West-facing slopes below treeline hold the most snow here, with about 100cm of snow, but as soon as you move in, anything more exposed, it goes to almost bare ground. The surface here is inconsistent with very soft snow to extremely stiff.