Aspen

Snowpack

Polly Layton Brian Lazar · Nov 18, 2020 · Aspen

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Weather

Warm, blustery day. High cloud cover over most of the valley. Sunny to partly cloudy where we were.

Snowpack

Snow coverage was spotty and discontinuous above treeline with an average depth of around 40cm. Highly-variable P hard wind-slab from 2cm to 20cm thick. Hard to find slabs bigger than about 10m across and even these were isolated. The stiff slabs sits on rounding precipitation particles, topping 10cm of 1mm facets at the ground. The basal facets were intermittent and are starting to round and gain strength. Snow coverage is more continuous near treeline, but the slab-weak layer combination is even more isolated, and more weak snow throughout.