Northern San Juan
AvalancheJeff Davis Chris Bilbrey · Jan 24, 2019 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Light snow continued till around noon. In the afternoon clouds broke and blue sky prevailed. Westerly winds were strong enough to move snow in the alpine and temperatures were mild.
Snowpack
The snowpack continues to show signs of weakness in the form of natural avalanches and failures in snowpack tests, but observations of cracking and collapsing have become less common. Today, we ventured into Cement Creek to assess the Persistent Slab avalanche problem on southerly slopes near-treeline. Over the past week this area has seem substantial snowfall and the snowpack on southerly slopes is over a meter deep. A mixture of crusts and facets persist throughout the snowpack and tests showed failures on these buried crust/facets combinations in the middle and basal layers of the snowpack.
Avalanche
A large natural avalanche avalanche ran around noon on Ajax Peak outside of Telluride. Another fresh natural avalanche was observed in Cement Creek on a SE facing aspect as well. A number of old natural avalanches were also observed. These likely ran during last weekends storm. 1/18-1/19.