Sawatch

Snowpack

Jason Konigsberg · Mar 23, 2022 · Sawatch

Weather

Northerly winds were moving snow with intense loading on some above treeline peaks. The intense loading wasn't widespread but the places where it was happening was significant.

Snowpack

Wind slabs were building on southerly-facing slopes especially above treeline. On one terrain feature I got long shooting cracks but the feature wasn't steep enough to slide. Down off the ridge, in a south-facing avalanche path, I found much less wind-affected snow with minimal cracking. There was a hard crust under a few inches of drifted snow. ---I dug on a northeast-facing near treeline slope and found the snowpack to be 150 cm deep. It's incredible how weak the buried near surface facets still are. They are 2 mm and fist-hard. This layer is buried 60 cm deep. Boot pen is through the slab and to the bottom of the faceted layer. Although I did not propagating results in one ECT, a PST had a result of 20/100 END with the block shooting off the column on a 29 degree slope.