Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Mark Gober · Feb 11, 2017 · Northern San Juan

Weather

started out as cloudy and warm with a strong SW wind blowing. By the end of the tour it had started to snow lightly.

Snowpack

What a mixed bag out there. The winds seem to be our friend right now, keeping the surface cooler/frozen-at least at pass level. Dug a quick pit on a SE aspect below TL and found a number of m/f crusts in the top 30cm. The surface crust was 4cm thick and quite stout. The pack was 185cm deep. ECTX and a CT13 Q2 30 cm down. This layer 30cm down seems to be the most problematic of all the different crusts but it showed resistance in tests. There were also perc tubes down to that layer. Below 30cm it turned into a very strong, rounded, 1F snowpack. Can't see anything stepping down into this slab. On northerly aspects there was a 10cm layer of graupel on top of a stiff wind layer. This graupel provided a most strange skiing experience and seems it will be a horrendous layer when it gets buried. It rolled away like ball bearings.