Sawatch

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Dec 19, 2023 · Sawatch

Weather

Mild and mostly cloudy

Snowpack

We mostly snowmobiled on the road to avoid damage to snowmobiles in the thin snowpack. When we did venture off-trail, the slab was sometimes supportable but for the most part it was easy for snowmobiles to cut through the faceting slab. We dug on a northerly near treeline slope and found a snowpack that was 60 to 80 cm deep. The slab is generally four-finger hard on the Hand Hardness Scale, though you can find spots where it is a little harder and more supportable. This slab is about 30 to 50 cm thick and rests on a thick layer of fist-hard facets about 20 to 30 cm thick. We got inconsistent Extended Column Test results with cracks propagating in the facets at 30 cm from the ground after moderate taps (ECTP13) in some tests and other test cracks did not go through the column (ECTN11). We didn't get into any above treeline areas with extensive wind-drifting, though some of these places were visible directly below ridgetop.