Southern San Juan
SnowpackChris Bilbrey · Mar 10, 2022 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Moderate snowfall till around noon, then intermittent snow showers during the early-afternoon. By around 2:30 pm, skies started breaking apart giving way to mostly clear skies by 4 pm.
Snowpack
We found about 11 inches of new snow that accumulated since Wednesday. The storm snow fell right-side-up and we found generally good bonding to underlying old snow layers and crust. Compression Test in a north-facing snowpit yielded various results ranging from sudden collapse, progressive collapse, and break failures. These occurred at individual hardness changes from the last two storms. In the same snowpit, the 2/21 facet layer was buried about 120 cm below the surface with a P hard slab resting above. The facets ranged from 4F to 1F, showed signs of rounding, and were unreactive in our test. We observed only minor evidence of wind transport in this area. As we approached treeline, moderate winds definitely thickened the snow near the surface, but it was still soft in nature overall. Slopes that approached or exceeded 35 degrees, we could easily initiate loose snow sluffing. Moving snow did not entrain much additional snow despite moving quickly down the hill. Sluffing traveled farther on easterly-facing slopes with a crust below recent storm snow. Alpine slopes looked extremely filled in, fat, and smoothed. If winds pick up in the next 24 hours, there will be a plethora of snow to transport into concerning wind-drifted slabs.