Sawatch
SnowpackDrew Gibson · Apr 24, 2024 · Sawatch
Weather
Hot and calm.
Snowpack
Near 11,000ft the snowpack is mostly melted out and that which is not is unsupportive by mid-day to include portions of the narrow snowmobile road. Closer to 11,500ft the southerly aspects are holding snow, and many steeper slopes are showing signs of recent Loose Wet avalanche activity. In the morning the snowpack was mostly supportive to boots, skis, and snowmobiles unless you traveled near small trees or willows. Once you punch through the surface crust you sink in wet snow on most aspects. The surface snow on the valley floor softened by 10:00 am but still held us up. Digging on a NE-facing slope near 12,000ft we found on average nearly 2m of snow, most of which is cold, but very dense with a mix of melt layers, pooling water, and percolation columns in the top meter. We did not dig to the ground since the snow was so dense, but while probing we could feel the bottom ~30cm was very soft. Propagation tests yielded no results, though we could coax out some sheer failures on layers with pooled meltwater. On this aspect we only found one pronounced dust layer about 60cm down that was wetting out in places near percolation columns. Across the valley, on southerly aspects, there is a sign of dust on the surface in many places. This is the second round of dust that the area received near the beginning of the month and its distribution is very aspect-dependent and not as thick. Though there was some loose wet activity on northern aspects, it was mostly confined to very steep rocky areas. All activity looked multiple days old.