Front Range
AvalancheEdit Szalai · Nov 24, 2017 · Front Range
Weather
Clear sunny weather in the morning, when started out at 11.30am. We saw high wind above the treeline, but it was warm and sunny below the treeline, where we spent the day skinning/skiing. By the time we turned back and skied out, a storm was moving in, clouds were forming and thunder was chasing us down the trail.
Snowpack
We had about a foot of snow on the ground. Starting out, we had about an inch of soft top layer with a lot of surface hoar around us. There was about an inch of fairly recent snow on top of a couple harder layers beneath. All of the top was forming hoar, which will get buried in the coming weeks with fresh snow. Higher above the top layer was still crusty, and only at the end of our tour out did we note that it softened up near the base as the day warmed up by 2pm.
Avalanche
We did not see any evidence of avalanches around or higher above us, as we were skiing towards West and North facing slopes. However, the hoar on the surface will keep me on the lookout in the coming weeks, as it will get buried with new snow. We did not dig a snowpit, because there was only about a foot on the ground above rocks. However, we noted a few harder suncrusted layers below, from old snow earlier in Oct/Nov.