Front Range
SnowpackAndrew McWilliams · Dec 29, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
A very cold start to the day due to valley inversions quickly turned into a warm and sunny day with light westerly winds. Temperatures were in the upper 20s at ridgetop.
Snowpack
Below treeline the snow depth was about 50cm and near treeline was about 80cm; we did not travel in the alpine. The top 20cm of snow is from the Christmas storm and is resting on a fragile and thin melt-freeze crust. Below the crust was a layer of near-surface facets above the midpack slab. The slab was 30cm thick and only one-finger hard on the Hand Hardness Scale and it was resting on about 20cm of depth hoar. Snowpit tests yielded results at the top of the depth hoar layer and the near-surface facet layer. My primary concern in this area is still an avalanche breaking in the depth hoar and taking the season's snowpack with it. We saw an avalanche on North Diamond Peak that likely failed at this interface and Extended Column Tests yielded propagating results after taps from the elbow on it too. On the slope nearby where I dug, and on South Diamond Peak, we saw multiple avalanches that appear to have failed in the near-surface facet layer. My snowpit test results only showed non-propagating failures at this interface, but it's likely that where these slides occurred there was either a stouter crust or a denser slab or both, to propagate a failure better. The snowpack was supportable to uphill and downhill travel near and below treeline and I did not observe any cracking or collapsing in the snowpack.