Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Mark Gober · Mar 16, 2017 · Northern San Juan

Weather

Warm, sunny day. On a ridgeline, below TL but a very treeless ridgeline, the wind was cool and keeping surface firm, but I was there fairly early too.

Snowpack

On my ascent, which was on a steep, southerly aspect, there were pockets of snow that were close to not supporting my weight. Overall though, it was well frozen from the night. In E. Lime, the surface was frozen 20cm deep and VERY solid. I would be surprised if today's temps softened the entire layer. The layer under the m/f layer was comprised of weakly bonded, wetted crystals that upon every test I did, the failure happened here. Propagation did not happen on ECT, but the crust broke under my shovel after 20 something hits and when I moved my shovel onto the unbroken part of column it propagated across the remaining 60cm. Very resistant and Q3. I did not dig a pit lower in the slope but checked thickness of frozen layer and it did diminish in thickness but not by much. Overall structure remained similar, as far as I could tell. This is a path we never got an avalanche out of this season. While it has seen explosives it is otherwise similar to a BC snowpack.