Aspen
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Feb 21, 2019 · Aspen
Weather
No new snow or any precipitation today. Skies were obscured in the morning but by noon skies were broken with a few short breaks of sun. Later afternoon cloud ceilings started to drop again. Winds were light at most elevations with an occasional moderate gust at ridgetop.
Snowpack
About 12 inches of recent snow sits on a softer non-persistent layer of snow. No results in extended column tests. In wind-drifted areas at all elevations there was minor cracking in the top few inches. Small pockets of 6 inch thick wind slabs could be found. I dug down about a meter in several places and performed extended column tests and got no results. Below the softer layer at 12 inches down is the dense snow that fell a week ago during the big atmospheric river storm. This slab is hard to poke your pole through and it would be very hard to trigger any avalanches on weak layers below this slab...if any even exist.---We toured over to the very large avalanche in Alley Gulch. I dug on a northeast-facing slope that was unaffected by the avalanche. Interestingly there was a graupel layer ~70 to 100 cm down from the surface. This layer is underneath the dense storm snow and may have been responsible for the avalanche. Hard to say as this was just one snowpit from near the avalanche.