Front Range

Snowpack

The upper meter of the snowpack was mostly pencil or knife hard snow that was very difficult to dig through. The surface was a windpacked layer and below this about 5cm down there was a layer of small facets and defragmenting particles. This could be the sliding interface for the next storm as it failed on isolation. About 20cm below the surface there was a weak layer of rounding facets that failed in a Extended Column Test but it was resistant.