Front Range
AvalancheAustin DiVesta · Mar 26, 2023 · Front Range
Weather
Mostly cloudy with a couple of breaks of sunshine in the afternoon ahead of an approaching storm. Temperatures remained cold for the entire day. Winds were light out of the west, southwest.
Snowpack
I mainly found soft snow below and near treeline, with above treeline having stiffer snow due to the wind. The winds in the last few days created a small wind skin on top of soft snow near treeline. Even this stiffer surface snow easily collapsed under the weight of a skier. I dug a snowpit on a west-facing slope near treeline with a snow height of 97cm. The wind skin was only 6cm over the soft new snew snow. About half of the snowpack here was made up of facets, but it seemed like they were gaining some strength. They were 1 Finger to 4 Finger in hardness. An Extended Column Test produced easy propagation (ECTP1 x2 at 80cm) within the recent snow that fell mid-last week. I did not find any propagation at any deeper layers. The snow height varied from 150cm to 70cm on this west-facing slope. I then dug on a southeast-facing slope near treeline with a snow height of 160cm. The upper 35cm was similar to the west-facing pit with a wind skin on top of recent soft snow. However, the next 20cm changed a lot with melt-freeze crusts and facet combinations. The bottom 100cm of this snow pit comprised facets but were stiff, ranging from 1 Finger to 4 Finger in hardness. There was some evidence that water had moved through the entire snowpack during the mid-march warm-up. Extended Column tests produced non-propagation results on the upper melt-freeze/facet combination (ECTN22 at 122 x 2). The only place I saw cracking was on top of Seven Utes on a small test slope with cornices, but nothing was shooting past my ski tips.
Avalanche
I saw evidence of an old avalanche that had been filled back in on the east face of Seven Utes Mountain.