Northern San Juan
AvalancheColin Mitchell · Apr 5, 2019 · Northern San Juan
Weather
A warm morning with scattered high thin clouds and very light winds.
Snowpack
Quite a difference from East Lime, which faces SW to the NE slope of West Lime. The HS on East Lime was 50-100 cm, probably deeper at the top of the slope, but I didn't travel that high. The snowpack is composed of a 10 cm thick melt-freeze crust on the surface that varied from supportable, to punchy, with large, unconsolidated melt forms below that. Boot pen 80 cm. The snow was cold this morning, but obviously had been recently saturated. Plenty of melting going on on this slope, with small dirt patches and a lot of rock showing near the road. West Lime is still holding a lot of snow. Average HS over 2 meters. Water had penetrated to the ground on this slope as well, but the snowpack was much more solid. See profile for details. Drainage has been established on both slopes, and the snowpack is fairly homogenous. Weak layers were still evident in my West Lime profile, which was dug in area that had not avalanched this season, but water had percolated through them and they were moist, rounded and well-bonded. The snowpack temperatures were 0 degrees top to bottom.
Avalanche
A few very tiny loose slides and snowballs to the edge of the road came out of cliffs and steep road cuts.