Northern San Juan
AvalancheJeff Davis · Dec 29, 2022 · Northern San Juan
Weather
The morning started cold and clear but clouds returned to the area bringing light snow around 11am. Winds were light.
Snowpack
Just over 6 inches of snow at 0.55 SWE fell in this area in the past 24 hours bringing the new snow storm total to 16 inches and over an inch of water. Traveling only near and below treeline the hight of snow ranged from 70-140 cms. Deepest on north, shallowest on south. Digging on a flat slope at 11,110 feet I observed some strength in the mid-pack with a 1 finger to pencil hard slab, but a worry-some base composed of facets and the start of Depth hoar. Compression and Extended Column tests both pointed to the basel facets as the layer of concern. Digging on a protect east aspect near treeline the same mid-pack slab was not observed and in general the snowpack had very little structure and boot pen was to ground. To this point the new snow is fist hard and though redistributed by the wind did not appear to be slabby.
Avalanche
The new snow tipped the scales on many slopes and avalanches were observed on all aspects at most elevations. Most avalanches were small to large and breaking at the new old interface. The largest slide I observed was on Trico peak and though it did not appear to go to ground the propagation was impressive.