Northern San Juan
AvalancheColin Mitchell · Apr 20, 2020 · Northern San Juan
Weather
A warm, very spring-like day. Light winds and broken skies with periods of sunshine and snow showers with no accumulation.
Snowpack
Northerly-facing near-treeline slopes had several inches of soft snow above a supportable crust from last week. Lower-angled open terrain had another softer sun/temperature crust right underneath last night's snow. This crust disappeared above 12,000 feet and on steeper terrain above about 11,500. Below the lower crust was a thin layer of moist, rounding facets that produced hard results on CTs with rough planar fractures, and ECTN 21. Underneath this layer were around 200 cm of well-consolidated rounds. Above treeline conditions were similar, but lacked the crusts and the snow depth was much lower near ridgeline. The southeast slopes of the main bowl were still deep, I had to look around to find an area with less than 165 cms. The snowpack here had been heavily infiltrated by melt water. The top 70 cm was K-hard melt forms interspersed with several ice masses and lots of percolation columns. Below this was around 50 cm of 2mm moist rounding facets. Southerly-facing slopes with a shallower snowpack are likely melt forms to the ground. Cloudy skies and relatively warm temperatures this week have kept the snowpack warm, especially below treeline. Descending through east-facing trees to the road, the snow was wet and ski penetration was 8-12".
Avalanche
No new activity observed