Front Range
AvalancheAustin DiVesta · Mar 28, 2024 · Front Range
Weather
An overall pleasant day with moderate winds out of the southwest. Clouds were moving into the area ahead of the incoming storm.
Snowpack
Cold, soft snow exists around the near, and above treeline, on most slopes, I traveled today. I dug a snowpit on a southeast-facing slope around 12,000ft and found the snowpack still dry, with no evidence that water had moved through the snowpack in the last couple of weeks. Here, the height of the snow was 164 cm deep. About 45cm 4 Finger to 1 Finger slab rests on top of a melt-freeze crust with some small facets above the crust, which I got propagation on the Extended Coloum Test (ECTP13 Down 45cm). The crust was about 5 cm thick, and everything below it was some sort of slowly rounding facet. It seems it would be pretty difficult to break through that 5 cm melt-freeze crust; there is still a chance an avalanche might be able to create enough mass to push through, creating a much larger avalanche. When I traveled onto a northeast-facing slope about 12,100ft, I was surprised to find a somewhat shallow snowpack directly below a ridge. I saw only a 106cm snowpack. A thin wind skin capped some decomposing snow grains, all in about 10cm. I got some easy propagation on an ECT5. This was isolated to the small wind-drifted snow on top of softer snow. I could not find any faceted grain where that failed. Another ECT did not produce any results on any other layers. Again, the snowpack remained dry, with the basal facets starting to round.
Avalanche
Small wind slab avalanche on the Current Creek headwall looked to be lookers right of Moonlight Bowl.