Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Mark Gober · Feb 8, 2011 · Northern San Juan

Weather

storm was breaking, scattered clouds, the occasional flurry, cold, breezy

Snowpack

I dug a pit on a easterly aspect, with a little twist to the north. 145 cm deep. new snow making up the top 45 cm which sat on a suncrust from 2 weekends ago. This crust varied in thickness depending on the aspect changes. where I was it was thin and weak. 2 cm of facets sat on top of it. I was able to get repeated Q1 shears-CT 15,16, ECT 11 all on the same layer. Throughout the tour, I had numerous rolling collapses (lost count at 10) that I would guess were failing on that layer. Below it was the December slab which still has good strength, but is losing it due to faceting. As I got higher on ridge, while in a flat area getting ready to tun back, I got one last large collapse and saw snow falling off of a tree quite a ways away, over the edge of the ridge to the south, so I went to look and saw I had remotely triggered a R2D2 slide in Porcupine slide path. I could not venture too far out to see dimensions because I did not want to get off of flat terrain.