Sawatch

Avalanche

Anonymous ยท Mar 14, 2016

View on map

Weather

Broken skies trending to overcast. High temp of 1.5 C at 11,000 ft at 1230. Very light snow (S-1) with intermittent bursts of heavier snow in the afternoon. Moderate westerly winds throughout day.

Snowpack

1 cm of snow accumulated throughout the day. We observed steady moderate blowing snow at ridge-tops and even some light blowing snow near and below treeline. HS of 110 cm at 11,400 ft on a west aspect. Profiles at this location showed 2-3 cm of recent storm snow on a melt-freeze crust. We did find a small facet layer below the crust (down 7 cm) that produced sudden results while isolating small column tests. The snowpack at this location remains mostly faceted- in various degrees-- apart from the skiff of new snow and the MFcr in the upper snowpack. A quick test profile on a south aspect at 11,000 ft revealed a mostly wet snowpack. HS of 80 cm, with the bottom 30 cm consisting of F hard rounding DH. The DHxr were wet.

Avalanche

We did not observe any avalanches.