Southern San Juan

Snowpack

Sheltered near treeline north and northwest aspects hold an average of 90 cm of snow. Pretty good for this time of the year despite the recent pause in snowfall. Cold temps and short nights are to thank for the preservation. Nearby weather stations have only seen about 10 cm of settlement since the November 27th storm. This preserved cold snow is nothing but sugar if you step off the skin track. Once you hit exposed slopes, uphill travel turns into a wind slab highway. We traveled on north, northwest, and west slopes and chose to dig in on a crossloaded WNW terrain feature. The 130 cm of snow we found there was mostly 1F and P hard, and could be broken off in two cohesive blocks. A weak layer of 1-1.5 mm facets that developed under a midpack melt-freeze crust recieved moderate failures during a compression test, but no failures during extended column tests.