Southern San Juan
AvalancheAnonymous · Jan 24, 2021 · Southern San Juan
Weather
Moderate snowfall and light southwest winds for the majority of the day with brief lulls, mostly ending by late afternoon.
Snowpack
We found about 14-24” of storm snow from the last few days with the top 6-8” being noticeably lower density, sitting on top of mostly unconsolidated facets or hard wind crusts in just a few spots like wind exposed gullies in the northeasterly terrain that we were in. We were surprised to not experience any cracking or collapsing on any of the slopes we traveled on, despite the significant new load on the weak and shallow snowpack.
Avalanche
We observed a large natural avalanche on an easterly, near treeline slope that seemed to have ran yesterday (1/23) or overnight on Parrott Peak. It appeared to have broken near the bottom of the new storm snow on a steep convex roll and ran fairly far into lower angle terrain below.