Front Range
SnowpackAustin DiVesta · Mar 25, 2025 · Front Range
Weather
A warm and slightly breezy spring-like day.
Snowpack
The snowpack is deepish around the Nitro Chutes. I found the height of snow to be around 170-190cm. The upper meter of the snowpack has several different layers comprising of rounds and recently fallen snow, but that all sits two different facet layers which got buried early and mid-March. These facet layers have not healed yet and are still producing avalanches and propagating in Extended Column Tests: today, both facet layers produced propagation. In the pit dug adjacent to the slide, I got this failure with nine taps from the wrist and after one hit from the shoulder in the mid-March layer. Interestingly, I did not get propagation in the early March layer. However, as I dug into the crown of the avalanche, it was the opposite. I didn’t get any failure in the mid-March layer but got propagation after one hit from the shoulder. This was also where the avalanche broke.