Sawatch

Snowpack

On the surface it looked like the pacific northwest in the near and below treeline terrain I traveled in today. Heavy, dense new snow. Lots of tree bombs, snow plastered to tree trucks, branches hanging heavy with their snow load. No obvious signs of instability. Dug on a W aspect near treeline, one of the weaker lower snowpacks I've seen. Propagating test results on the Jan 1 facet layer (about 50 cm down). Looking up into the alpine, west slopes were stripped down to the tussocks. Serious transport was occurring near and above treeline, even saw some good wind affect below treeline.