Aspen

Snowpack

On a cross country ski outing to the Maroon Bells Lake this afternoon I hiked a short distance west up a slope from the lake into the trees and dug a pit. The slope was facing east at about 25 to 30 degrees and the snow pack was about three feet deep. There were two inches of five finger fresh snow on the top, an inch of two finger hardness new snow, another layer of three finger new snow sitting on top of 2 to 2 and a half feet of sugar. A compression test showed an easy failure on top of the sugar. The sugar itself was harder to trigger but it eventually went from the bottom after pulling on the shovel from behind the column. This test happened at 3pm. There were also numerous wet slides that looked like they happened yesterday or the day before around 10,000 feet and lower