Sawatch

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg, Ethan Greene · Dec 4, 2018 · Sawatch

Weather

A light, cold breeze at below and near treeline elevations. There was no evidence of wind-loading around the Highway 91 corridor. When we returned to Leadville, snow trasport was visible from Mt Elbert south to Clear Creek.

Snowpack

We dug on a south-facing near treeline slopes to look for the prominent mid-pack weak layer that is plaguing other aspects. Most layers were faceted to some extent and we did not find a distinct mid-pack layer that stood out from the rest. We did get an ECTP24 on a small but well-developed faceted layer directly above a thick melt-freeze crust. See snowpit for more details.---We also dug on a near treeline northeast-facing slopes with layers of wind-drifted snow. The snowpack in this wind-drifted area is 125 cm deep and we got an ECTP24 on the notorious mid-pack faceted layer at 50 cm down from the surface. Subsequent shoulder blows yielded no further failures. The 50 cm slab over the failing layer is 4-finger hard near the surface increasing to pencil hard above the soft 4F- layer.---On sheltered easterly slopes, walking off the skin would produce cracks that were small in length but deep in depth.