Southern San Juan

Snowpack

The snowpack was deep with a few surface hoar layers buried just shy of a meter deep. around 35 cm-40 cm deep a persistent dust layer existed which had formed a fairly hard slab with a surface hoar layer underneath at about 60-70 cm. This was the primary concern on skiing at and below treeline, however the hard slab provided enough support that it was extremely difficult to propagate failure in this layer. An ECT was performed on a north aspect below treeline with a slope of about 30 degrees with ECTX results. We continued tapping beyond shoulder strength to a count of 37 before failure occurred with no propagation. (ECT37 Q3 {7 taps with greater strength than shoulder). In some areas below cliff bands the recent storm slab easily fractured and was strongly consolidated. A few point release sluffs were seen, but they were shallow, harmless and lacked the energy to step down into deeper slabs.