Southern San Juan
AvalancheColin Mitchell · Mar 9, 2023 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Warm day with light winds and high thin clouds with plenty of radiation getting through.
Snowpack
West Lime stayed cold during this latest warm spell. The top layer was about 20 cm of mixed forms, rounding facets and decomposed/fragmented grains, hardness was 1f- . There was a hint of a wind skin in a few areas, but it was only a couple of millimeters thick. Below this layer, they snowpack slowly increased in strength to pencil hard down about 50. This is the recent snow/old snow interface. Below this was K-hard rounds to the ground. HS averaged about 180 cm, and boot pen was ~15 cm. More southerly-facing paths like East Lime Creek, Henry Brown and the Engineers had a melt-freeze crust 8-10 cm thick over P- rounds down to the 2/14 interface, and much harder snow below that. Overall, surfaces are in good shape, and bonding with the warm storm snow forecast for the next few days should be good. There is some question about how much of a load that West Lime will take, current thresholds are 2+" SWE, but we will want to keep an eye on it if we start approaching 2".
Avalanche
No new activity observed in the corridor