Northern San Juan

Snowpack

The snowpack in the San Juans is off to a typically poor start. The September snow is baked down to a hard bed surface topped with a rain crust in certain areas from about 11,000 to 12,200 or so. Near and above TL there is a P-hard slab above the early oct interface from the fierce northerly winds we had mid oct. This hard slab is resulting in some high propagation potential near and above TL. Above that is the new slab from the past couple storms. On 10/30, our party was skiing the "butter bowl" in velocity basin and remote triggered a slide on terrain barely over 30 degrees that ran quite far given the low HS overall. Est. 2'x30'x500'. As we skied next to the debris shooting cracks continued with every turn. Quite alarming instability really. On 10/31 skied on RMP east onto upper prospect where we observed a natural that was about 2'x300'x500'. Rumbling collapses and shooting cracks were a observed on all aspects except south.