Front Range

Snowpack

Hi, My partner and I headed out of the Eldora ski resort Tuesday morning,and toured to the Lost Lake area just west of the resort. We ski cut "right chute" N aspect, 10,500', 40+ degrees. There was about 1.5 meters of snow in the start zone, 50 or so of new (Fist hard)from the most recent event, about the same of older snow (1 finger) and then a crust, knife/pencil hard, then 30 or so of facets and depth hoar below that. We were able to penetrate the buried crust with our skis, and were going to the ground with our cuts in most places. The storm slab was pretty thick and heavy, and, likely due to a remarkable lack of wind in our area throughtout the event, not very reactive at all. We had a couple of large frightenening whumpfs in the start zone itself, but nothing in the flats above. The whole start zone whumpfed under my weight, but never got going, even though the slope angle where I was standing was over 40 degrees. The storm slab seemed to lack the cohesion and "energy" to initiate propagation. The diamonds between our cuts were sliding on a layer of facets above the crust. Some of them went crashing into the lowest cuts, but didn't initiate anything. It appeared that the meter or so of snow in the lower angle bottom part of the chute was well bonded enough, and providing enough support, to hold up the rest. Or maybe we just missed the sweet spot. It's worth noting that the bottom of the chute had little snow before the 12/11 event. About 75 vertical feet below the top of the chute, the buried crust disappeared and the angle moderated to around 35 degrees. The whumpfing had stopped, and the snow felt pretty consistent with the "ski pole penetrometer". We unroped and skied to the bottom of the chute and through a low-angle part of the bowl below. No further signs of instability noted. Hope this is helpful! Colin=