Front Range
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · May 11, 2021 · Front Range
Weather
From mostly clear skies in the morning to periods of heavy snow in the afternoon with no visibility. It seemed windy when the snow squalls moved through but it was hard to see anything. Total storm snow measured at 7 inches just above treeline.
Snowpack
In the morning the new snow was quite moist and would slide easily as a Loose Wet avalanche when pushing with skis. The slope had to be above 35 degrees at least. This moist snow was sliding on a loose cohesionless faceted polycrystals on a dust crust. Up higher, where the snow was colder, I did not observe the same thing. The dust crust was buried deeper and unreactive and the shallowest crust was rock hard but the new snow seemed to be bonded well. I moved around some thicker wind drifts (about 12 inches or so) and did not see signs of instability in the drifted snow. This may have changed later in the afternoon with heavy snow and winds increasing. In places where the new snow was not drifted it was soft and not slabby. One ECT in a sheltered area (northeast near treeline) did not produce any significant results.