Sawatch

Snowpack

Spencer Herford · Feb 28, 2022 · Sawatch

View on map

Weather

Sunny, warm, calm. Spring!

Snowpack

Poked over into the east facing terrain off the ridge, we got a good whumph when the two of us were moving on the slope. We found cracks from that collapse about 100ft away to both sides. Test pit at 11600ft showed HS of 186cm, ECTP3 up 155cm, failed on buried near surface facets from before the recent system. I noticed two more crust/facet combinations right below where our test failed as well. The slab from the recent storm was mostly 4F hard but with some variations, the top 5cm was warming up quite a bit. NW slopes we primarily traveled on today also have a poor structure, however the recent snow is still pretty soft, F hard mostly. Closer to the ridge it firmed up a bit, but this was more isolated in distribution, and any cracking was confined to a few cm from our skis. No other signs of instability on NW slopes in our travels.