Southern San Juan
AvalancheChris Bilbrey · Jan 14, 2021 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Strong northwest wind and angry gust at all elevations. Blowing snow in the alpine that mostly sublimated into the atmosphere. Lots of dead timber fall below treeline.
Snowpack
Today's strong winds were the main weather element contributing to obvious/ notable change. We observed blowing snow at all elevations with the most snow moving around in the alpine. Seemed like snow was sublimating versus loading slopes below. The snowpack below treeline continues to show signs of weakening near the surface and weak layers of concern did not produce propagating test results. Despite a supportable snowpack to skis, we could break through to our knees in many spots on north and east-facing slopes. The higher we climbed, the stiffer, more supportable the upper snowpack got. A snowpit on a northeast aspect in the alpine had multiple wind-stiffened layers above the 12/11 facet interface and we observed clean, poppy failures in ECTs. It took over 20 taps for the column to fail, but in the end, we still observed a propagating result. No other signs of unstable snow observed in our travels on multiple aspects.
Avalanche
No new avalanche activity observed. One old, large slide that probably ran in late December.