Northern San Juan
SnowpackJeremy Yanko · Apr 3, 2022 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Mostly cloudy with brief periods of sun and snow showers.
Snowpack
Lower elevation snow surfaces offered a supportable crust to skis but not boot penetration between 10-11,000ft during the morning hours though Boot pen was supportable down to 30cm where a 5cm melt-freeze crust sits on top of moist clustered grains below. The temperature crust on the surface was more easily breakable under skis while moving up to 11-12k, though boot pen was more supportable in places with sparse tree coverages at the mid elevation band. End goal today was to gather structure status sample on east facing terrain right at treeline. No propagating fractures were noted with long column tests and compression test scores yielded hard results within the PWL of concern. The main weak layer is down 70cm from the surface at this location and is recovering nicely into 2mm 4F rounding facets, giving way to broken non-planar shears. Only easy-moderate CT scores were noted on the 3/29 Melt freeze crust layer in the top 20cm of the snowpack. Lower down in this profile holds 2 ice lenses that formed during a big warmup one week ago. Exiting the hills around 2pm still offered supportable but manky travel on skis back down to 10,000ft on easterly terrain. No signs of unstable snow conditions were observed except for an isolated low elevation north facing gully feature that cracked a ski length wide and a slab failed 35cm deep on top of moist facets below.