Front Range
AvalancheJason Konigsberg, Austin Divesta · Feb 17, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
Clear skies with cold temperatures. We did not observe any wind loading. Winds were light at ridgetop.
Snowpack
There hasn't been much snow in this area since the last week of January. The Never Summer Snotel recorder .2" of SWE in the last few days and that lined up with our observations of a couple inches of recent snow. Wind has been the big player with northerly slopes showing hard surfaces in the alpine. We did not notice significant loading on westerly slopes from the recent east winds.---The recent two inches is on top of near surface facets, and where the new snow is stiffened by the wind, we observed cracking. We didn't travel on any alpine northerly slopes, but I suspect some of the recently drifted hard slabs sit on this faceted snow. It's an isolated issue and any avalanche would be small, but I would be on guard if entering very steep terrain with a hard snow surface.---The upper foot of the snowpack is soft snow that is mostly faceting. Like other faceting periods we have had over the last few months, the near surface facets are small and not well developed. We'll have to see if this changes with another few days of clear weather and a storm to follow. Current thinking is that next weeks storm will fall on a weak surface, resulting is storm snow issues, but right now we don't see a new persistent problem developing.---Other areas of concern are beneath the end-of-January storm. During the last week of January, the Never Summer Snotel recorded a gain 2.3" of SWE or about 30 inches of snow. This snow is on top a thin layer of facets, that is hard to identify and not distinct in snowpits. It was unreactive in tests. In one snowpit, we found 5 to 10 mm surface hoar at this depth (40 cm from the surface). We got a result of ECTP20 in an Extended Column Test on this layer. We could not replicate this result or find this layer in other snowpits we dug.---Overall snow depths are 2 meters or more on northerly near treeline slopes. Below treeline, at 11k feet, the snow height is about 140 cm. At low elevations, < 10k feet, the snow depth is a meter of less.---In all of our snowpits we were not concerned about the basal weak layers due to a stout, thick slab up to pencil-hard on the hand hardness scale. Although concerns for deeply breaking avalanches are limited for now, this layer, at 40 to 50 cm from the ground, is still four-finger hard and could become reactive again with very large storm.
Avalanche
No recent avalanches observed anywhere including on the drive to the trailhead which encompasses the east side of the Gore Range, Parkview Mountain, etc.