Northern San Juan
AvalancheKrista Beyer · Feb 26, 2024 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Hold on to your hats! Day started and ended with warm spring-like temperatures under a grey sky. Temperatures were above freezing from the town of Silverton at 9,318 ft to Red Mountain Pass at 11, 200 ft with weak freezes below 10,000ft (it even rained/sleeted in Silverton last night...gross). SW winds increased throughout the day with gusts up to 55mph while digging with limited cover near treeline (poor decisions were made...)
Snowpack
Just walking down a side street of Silverton says alot about what has happened to the snowpack over the last week. Large refrozen tire tracks and the resurfacing of dog droppings (perhaps horse droppings if you're on the south side of town) is the annual signal of spring-like conditions. Typically this signifies an isothermal trend (trending, but not there) in the snowpack, however if you travel up 1500 feet, conditions reflect more of a mid-winter high pressure lull that often graces our continental snowpack. Snow surfaces includes 2cm of fresh snow on top of the skin track and generally soft surfaces below treeline on north-facing slopes and a weak meltfreeze crust as aspect wrapped around to the east and southeast. Near treeline conditions included hard 4cm melt freeze crusts on south-facing terrain, soft orange-peel wind-blown surfaces on east-facing terrain, soft northerlies, and hard hollow-sounding windslab in cross-loaded terrain features. Westerlies at ridgeline have been stripped to rock. Active snow transport was begrudgingly observed as I tried to take photos. Two pits were dug (because I'm a glutton for punishment) one on a cross loaded terrain feature on a ENE slope adjacent to an old avalanche and another in a more wind-sheltered NE slope. Attached media shows both pits. Compression tests produced moderate failures on basal facets in the wind sheltered pit and moderate failures in the upper pack in the crossloaded pit. No propagating results were observed in either pit during ECTs.
Avalanche
Old avalanche on east-facing slope. Looks to have failed on a steep shallow area and went to ground. I could see exposed rocks that were filled in with driffted snow. Likely failed during last storm.