Aspen

Snowpack

Brian Lazar · Apr 15, 2022 · Aspen

Weather

Warm, mostly cloudy with a few brief rays of sun poking through. Breezy at ridgeline with moderate northwesterly winds most of the time, but wind direction was variable throughout the day.

Snowpack

Average snowpack depth still sits around 3m in this area. Roughly 60cm of recent storm snow has settled into slabs 30-40cm thick. The slab is Fist hard at the surface and stiffens to 1F hardness at the new/old snow interface marked by a prominent dust layer. Areas with stiff wind-drifted slabs are spotty and discontinuous across the terrain despite continued drifting snow. Large column tests did not produce propagating results (ECTN with the slabs breaking at 23 taps). We could get small cafeteria-tray-size soft slabs to slide on underlying crusts on slopes steeper than 35 degrees on east to southeast aspects but they would slide a short distance and stop. We dropped numerous chunks of fresh cornices onto steep east and northeast-facing slopes with no activity. Lots of small fresh cornice formation, and older cornices are now quite large and threatening in some locations. Snow became moist and sticky below 11,000 ft by noon, and small wet dribblers and pinwheels started to run naturally.