Front Range
AvalancheIan Fowler · May 13, 2025 · Front Range
Weather
Despite warm temperatures, clouds and wind kept the snowpack fairly solid through most of the day.
Snowpack
The snowpack below treeline is receding quicker than my hairline and most trails that are not on northerly aspects or shaded by thick trees are melted out. Near treeline was the goldilocks area today where you could have triggered a wet loose avalanche or maybe a mini wet slab. On northerly aspects the surface crust was about 2 to 3 inches thick and had very weak wet grains beneath. This crust was collapsing into the wet snow to give some very spooky collapses. The crust wasn't really strong enough to propagate much of a fracture but I could see pulling a way a mini crust slab in steep terrain that could gouge deeper. Once you stepped through the wet grains the snowpack felt supportive beneath that and boot penetrations never got more than about 6 inches. Easterly aspects near treeline were pretty cooked and good corn skiing at around noon and south looked pretty tired and was very melted out. Above treeline on north aspects the snowpack was still over 2 meters deep and felt pretty homogenous, some crusts but no obvious weak layers. The top 4 to 6 inches had transitioned into large melt-freeze forms that had formed a strong crust overnight. Beneath that was 1 finger rounding wet snow from the previous weeks storm. There was some pooling of water above an old melt freeze crust (pre-storm). Beneath this was more finger hard rounds which had percolation columns running through it above a dust crust layer. North aspects never thawed by noon today and was perfect for ski crampons. Southerly aspects looked to be mostly dirty snow with very little clean snow left for Loose Wet avalanches.
Avalanche
There was a widespread avalanche cycle on May 8, that I assume most of the avalanches I saw occured.