Grand Mesa
SnowpackBrandon Levy · Mar 23, 2020 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Very light snowfall this morning becoming light at a rate of 1 cm / hr by 1100. Increasing light to moderate Southwest winds were drifting snow to lee features.
Snowpack
Looking specifically at a shallow location somewhat representative of the Cliffs start zones illustrated a generally weak snowpack with over a third of the snowpack comprised of the recent storm snow since 3/19. Ski penetration was around 20 cms while boot penetration reached the ground. The new snow above the faceting melt-freeze crust buried on 3/18-3/19 was still soft and not homogeneous nor cohesive enough to fracture in a long column test. The facets below the 3/18 crust did fail with moderate force and sudden fracture character in a small column test. The shallow and rounding depth hoar produced a propagating result in a long column test with hard force. The overlying block fractured and crumbled and I was unable to pull an intact block off the column after the test. Crown from 3/20 mitigation is drifted in at #4. Soft slab seems incapable of communicating fracture at this location on persistent grains; however, structure is worrisome with additional loading or in locations where the slab is stiffer.