Northern San Juan
AvalancheAnn Mellick Jeff Davis · Mar 31, 2020 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Warm temperatures, ample sunshine, blue sky. Nice day on Red Mountain Pass.
Snowpack
3 inches of snow was measured on the top of Red Mountain Pass this morning. Southwest winds were strong enough to move snow in the alpline. The new snow quickly settled and warmed on sunny and lower slopes out of the wind, as today was the warmest and sunniest days in the past week. Today, we dug on a northerly facing slope below treeline to assess faceting lower in the pack and see how the Red Mountain Pass snowpack compares to other parts of the forecast area. What we continue to observe is Red Mountain Pass likely has the deepest snowpack in the North San Juan zone. Digging on a NE facing slope around 11,000 feet we found a strong and deep pack that was almost a 3 meter deep. Hand hardness went from fist to Pencil Minus in the upper 160 cm's. The layer of interest was a 10 cm wind slab from last weeks wind event that sits in the upper 50 cm's of the snowpack. We did produce propagating ECT results on 25 taps but no cracking or collapsing when traveling in the area. On the other side of the compass and below 10,000 feet slopes showed significant signs of warming. Increasing wet avalanche hazard was observed in the forms of rollerballs, wet sloppy snow, and wet avalanche activity.
Avalanche
Lots of long running Loose avalanches observed on steep rocky slopes. Some loose avalanche triggered slab avalanches. Most avalanches were small, but a few could be rated as large as a D2.