Northern San Juan
SnowpackChris Dickson · Feb 18, 2025 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Warm and sunny at low elevations throughout the day, but colder, cloudy, and breezy up high. A low cloud ceiling kept things cool until the afternoon but then broke apart later in the day, ending with sunny skies.
Snowpack
I dug below treeline on a west-facing slope near the Bald Mtn saddle at 11,700' and found 20 inches of settled snow sitting above a mostly faceted snowpack. Total height of snow here was 125cms. Tests failed at the 2/14 layer. Dug again in Delta Bowl on an east-facing slope at 12,500', a little ways down from the top of the bowl to assess a previously wind-drifted area. This is where I found 34 inches of recent snow and the aforementioned midpack wind slabs over depth hoar. The new snow here has settled and stiffened into a cohesive slab but is well-adhered to the old surface, a one-finger-hard wind slab. Tests here resulted in broken failures within the bottom of the storm snow.