Northern San Juan
AvalancheAlex Haddad & Krista Beyer · Apr 8, 2025 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Sunny and warm with light southerly winds until 1400. Scattered skies with moderate northerly winds for the rest of the afternoon.
Snowpack
We traveled on north, east, northeast, and southeast slopes at all elevations. Below treeline slopes were getting punchy and sloppy by mid-afternoon on all aspects. East slopes around the near treeline elevation band were wetting mid-day and the surface few inches of wet snow easily slid on a buried frozen crust. The bullseye for avalanche activity from our wet cycle before the most recent snowfall was on east slopes. We dug on an east slope to see if weak facets were still preserved there that could be impacted by another round of warm temperatures. We found weak facets beneath a layer of melt freeze crust junk, knife to pencil hard with some ice layers scattered within. The weak layer has likely seen water transport during previous warmups. The presence of firm over weak layering suggests that with a flush of water we could still see wet slabs on east slopes. The question remains whether a more gradual warming will suspend these issues or not.
Avalanche
Any natural activity on open slopes was small and limited to the top few inches of snow. Most above treeline slopes have yet to see much of a shed cycle, hopefully, the gradual warm-up has spared us. The avalanche mentioned in the observation summary was likely triggered by accelerated heating due to the geology of the area. The amount of debris suggests that this may have dug deeper than the shallow buried crust that has kept avalanches small on other slopes.