Southern San Juan
AvalancheChris Bilbrey · Apr 7, 2023 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Splitter spring day with lots of sun and light winds along ridgetops. A few high clouds started to move in around midday, mostly north of the range.
Snowpack
Solid overnight freeze made for hard, fast surface conditions this morning. Only the top 2 to 3 inches of the most recent storm snow on southerly-facing slopes near and above treeline got soft and wet. The crust below stayed intact on our travels and supportive to boot penetration. Sunny slopes below treeline developed corn conditions around midday with the top 3 to 4 inches moist/ wet. Egressing out a low-elevation gully with southerly-facing slopes provided supportive, non-rotten travel conditions. Northerly-facing slopes below 10,000 feet produced numerous rollerballs and are showing signs of warming. We found a very thin zipper crust on northeast-facing slopes but not due north. Northerly-facing slopes at upper-elevations remains cold and dry. Deeper, drifted areas below alpine ridges were soft and did not produce any cracking. Overall, the surface snow has bonded well to the underlying hard wind layer or crust. We kicked off a few pinwheels around steeper terrain features near treeline with a more direct turn to the east, but none entrained additional snow volume. Very little evidence across the landscape of wet snow avalanche activity from the current warming trend.
Avalanche
Observed active roller-balling near and above treeline on east and southeast-facing slopes. These got going around 10 AM. They did not entrain additional snow to coalesce into a wet snow sluff/ slide. A few small, Loose Wet avalanches that ran the day prior originating from steep cliffs on Gibbs Peak.