Sangre de Cristo

Snowpack

Mike Cooperstein · Mar 13, 2016 · Sangre de Cristo

Weather

The day started with clear to few clouds and progressed through scattered at around 11:00 a.m. to broken by 2:00 p.m. The day was warm and wind speeds near treeline were calm. I did not see any snow transport at the ridge tops, but there is not much snow left to transport.

Snowpack

I was not able to do a hands on assessment of the snowpack, but in general, from a distance the snowpack looked similar to the eastern part of the Front Range zone. Snow remains in gullies facing north through east to southeast where the prevailing winds had previously deposited it. All convex features are striped clean of snow. I did not see any avalanches. My assumption is that the snowpack is well consolidated in these deeper gullies and any deep persistent weak layers are either burred to deep or are below a stiff set of crusts or a slab.