Front Range
SnowpackIan Fowler · Jan 12, 2025 · Front Range
Weather
It was cold but thankfully fairly calm. Snow was flurrying from the sky on and off all day. It was cold.
Snowpack
Below treeline the snow is fairly soft with an average snow height of 1 meter. I was easily able to push my ski pole all the way to the ground and it felt like a fist slab over fist basal facets. On a westerly near treeline slope that was quite open I experienced the most collapsing of any location. The snowpack in this area was the thinnest I found at only 70 to 90cm deep and was broken into thirds. Bottom third was basal facets, middle third was the post Christmas slab and the top third was storm snow from this weekend. In my pit location the slab was supportive to boots as long as you were very delicate but once I punched through I was on the ground and had a good collapse that coincided with punching through the slab. When I worked up to around 12000 feet in both an easterly and southeasterly snow pit I found a pencil hard layer buried about 30cm deep the was formed with winds just before this weekends storm. This layer was thin and not reactive currently. Both these areas had around 120 -150cm of snow and both had weak basal facets that failed with hard force on Extended Column Tests. Both also had End results with very short cut lengths on Propagation Saw Tests. Interestingly the weak layer in my easterly profile was a facet crust combo which was not found on the southeast aspect. It seems like above treeline is getting harder to trigger but if you find the sour spot you can trigger a very large avalanche.