Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Mark Gober Ann Mellick · Feb 5, 2018 · Northern San Juan

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Weather

Overall a surprisingly nice day. Breezy and cool in the alpine with sunny skies. Warm in the valley bottoms

Snowpack

The snowpack is losing its reactivity in the northerly below treeline terrain we ascended. The slab is faceting away and we experienced no cracking or collapsing. Near treeline we encountered numerous "lenses" of hard old wind-deposited slabs on noerth and east aspects. These are spotty and not contiguous, but are sitting on a weak structure of facets and other layers of either melt/freeze crusts or older wind slabs. We did have a large collapse in this zone which propagated 60'-75'.